Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump’s revanchist administration has systematically scuttled investments in the fight against climate change, often at significant short-term expense. For example, the federal government has paid out billions of dollars to multiple contractors to cancel green energy projects that were under contract.

A similar wave of destruction has been draining local governments, universities and nonprofits in Minnesota. Through the feds’ ongoing delay or denial of congressionally allocated funding – for example, the refusal of the Federal Transit administration to make transit capital grants over the last 15 months – our institutions have been forced into terrible financial choices. 

The latest case, and definitely not the last, was the announcement last week that HourCar, the Twin Cities carshare program, will cease operations due to a shortfall of $625,000. The closure would be a waste of a long-standing investment in climate action and the loss of an innovative program that has pioneered a model of reducing transportation emissions. I hope there’s a way to prevent this.

A steady decline of dollars

A quick explainer: HourCar and Evie are two types of carshare programs that have existed in the Twin Cities, in some form, for years. HourCar, launched in 2005, is a “docked” system where cars can be checked out and returned to stations scattered around the Twin Cities. The smaller Evie program opened in 2022 as a dockless fleet of battery electric cars that can be used for one-way trips, but only within slowly expanding zones. 

From 2014: MSP’s sharing economy hits the road: What you need to know about Lyft, Uber, Car2Go and HourCar

In addition to user fees, the programs have been funded over the years by local and federal grants, corporations like Xcel Energy and philanthropies like the McKnight Foundation.

As of Oct. 9, both programs plan to cease operations by Oct. 15 and pull their cars off the streets. Amanda LaGrange, Hourcar CEO, cited spiking insurance costs, driven by inflation, which have doubled in one year. But there’s also the declining grant support from local philanthropies and federal sources. 

“In 2024, we were able to bring in about $2.6 million through grant and federal funds,” LaGrange said. “[Then] we started to watch the slow decline. Last year, it was down to $2 million, and now $1.5 million.”

The cratering of grant support is a downstream effect of Washington, D.C., abandoning its previous commitments to local governments and nonprofits. Without federal funding for everything from housing to health care to green energy, local officials and nonprofit leaders have been forced to triage. Good ideas like HourCar have ended up deprioritized to ensure the survival of programs meeting residents’ more immediate needs. 

‘I never give up hope.’

For Minneapolis and St. Paul, the closing of HourCar is a gut punch to action around climate change, especially given that transportation emissions have proven to be the largest and most intractable piece of the puzzle. Carsharing programs are precisely the kind of transportation investments that shift behavior – what planners call “travel demand” – because they allow people to more easily transition to transit or other alternatives. 

For people in most of the U.S., getting rid of a car is a pipe dream because most American cities (Twin Cities included) are simply too sprawling and auto dependent. Invariably, people require trips to one-off destinations in the suburbs, where transit investments have been lagging for generations. Carshare is like an insurance policy, a useful tool for trips that might happen every week or two.

Evie, the one-way option, is even more innovative. They’ve been installing fast chargers at street corners around Minneapolis and St. Paul for three years, creating “hubs” where the Chevy Volts recharge. (Users can return their car anywhere within a specific zone, but they get an account credit for parking at a charging station.) The result is a win-win scenario where climate action meets affordability, two goals that are often pitted against each other.

For many, the carshare programs are lifelines to a doctor appointment in the suburbs and other difficult trips. Carsharing liberates people from the budgetary burden of a first or second car, the annual cost of which now exceeds $12,000 per year. For people in Frogtown, Dinkytown, Phillips, or elsewhere, that is a significant chunk of savings every month.

Still, there’s an opportunity for last-minute intervention. When I asked if she’d given up hope, Amanda LaGrange laughed. 

“I work in nonprofits, I never give up hope” she said.

The saving grace is that $625,000 is not a lot of money to rescue a long-standing project, especially one that works as preventative care for traffic pollution. It’s about the cost of one brand new signalized intersection (just the stoplights), and a tiny fraction of other capital investments underway in the metro. 

For comparison, the Ramsey County cost share for the long-delayed Purple Line bus rapid transit is over $30 million. One under-construction interchange at Highway 36 and Lake Elmo Avenue totals $43 million. Though capital budgets are almost always viewed differently than nonprofit operations, losing a project like HourCar is a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to transportation.

“We still believe maybe there’s a chance,” admitted LaGrange. “Technically, I have to follow official statements that our board makes, [but] it feels like if there was some significant change in funding, they would consider it.”

From 2020: Innovative Twin Cities car-share project to democratize electric vehicles

The good news, if there is any, is that a burgeoning movement of local leaders have been rallying to save the system before it’s scrapped. There’s already a website of people organizing to find funding, and a rally is planned for Oct. 13. To cite just one possible solution, Rep. Katie Jones (DFL-Minneapolis) has promised to bring a bill to the legislature next year that could fund the system.

The test of the next two years will be whether state and local governments can keep enough of the roots and stems of progress from being torched by the federal government. Hard-won programs that are lost, like the Twin Cities’ innovative carshare, will need to be rebuilt at greater expense down the line. So for another year or two, we need to shore up our institutions — public universities, the transit system, public health organizations, and more — until reinforcements arrive. 

The situation reminds me of someone deliberately cutting down a tree in a public park, doing irreversible damage. The best case scenario is that someone replants it in the future, but even then the solution comes at great financial and opportunity cost. Far better to save the tree, if possible.

The newly formed Neighbors for Community Carshare created a petition to save HourCar. Their rally will take place on Oct. 13 at 6:00 p.m. at Government Plaza in downtown Minneapolis.  

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