The University will acquire two vehicles from Zipcar, a worldwide car-sharing program in which universities rent cars to students at an hourly rate, after efforts by Union officials.Class of 2008 Senator Asher Tanenbaum said the University will have the cars in as soon as eight weeks but it may take well over that amount of time. According to Assistant Director of Procurement Services Edward Perkins, Brandeis will likely receive a Ford Escape and a Toyota Prius. The hourly rate will likely be $7 to $9.

The process of actually getting the cars to Brandeis takes a long time because Zipcar has to receive the cars and then outfit them with tracking technology, Perkins said.

Perkins reviewed the Zipcar contracts before presenting them to Vice President of Campus Operations Mark Collins, who spearheaded the effort to bring Zipcars to Brandeis on the side of the administration.

"I think that this is a great thing for the students," said Perkins. "They're going to be able to use these [cars] and remove traffic from the campus."

One of the main goals of introducing Zipcars to Brandeis is to reduce traffic on campus and to increase the availability of parking spots, Perkins said. He admitted that two cars won't make much of a difference but believes the Zipcar program can remove up to a dozen cars from campus.

In addition, the cars will be helpful to students who would otherwise not be able to bring them to school. "For one thing, a lot of freshmen and sophomores can't have cars, so it would be a very useful thing for people to get groceries, bring boxes or just go on a Saturday night trip to Boston," Tanenbaum said.

The administration finds Zipcars attractive, Tanenbaum said, because they require a minimal amount of work on behalf of the University. The administration would be in charge of the cars and would have to maintain them, along with the other campus vehicles, but Zipcar will set up the entire infrastructure in terms of billing.

"[Waltham is] close enough that it's there, but far enough that you can't really access it," said Daniel Baronofsky '09 regarding Zipcars on campus.

Baronofsky came up with the idea of bringing Zipcars to Brandeis during his campaign for Student Union Senate at the start of the year. His bid for office was unsuccessful, but Tanenbaum took up the project this year and brought the issue to Collins' attention.

According to Baronofsky, Collins is very determined to succeed in bringing this service to the University.

Collins was unavailable for comment by press time.