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MICHAEL GOETHE
a city with roughly 33,000 students,
80 bars, and hundreds of DUI arrests
every year, it's no wonder that
Athens concerns itself with safe
drinking and sober driving. Options for getting
home safely after a night downtown include
taxis and the student-run "WatchDawgs" orga
nization, but there is a new addition to the
late-night transit family: Zingo, Inc.
In 2005, Charles Barfield and Jim Valentine
founded the company in Atlanta, and in 2006
UGA graduate P.X. Head jumped on board.
Three years later, the Athens branch opened,
as well as seven other locations nationwide.
Matt Presnell, Travis Presnell and Scott Allen
partnered up to start the Athens branch in
April of 2008. "I saw [Head] at a wedding and
he told me what he
was doing in Atlanta,
and he was trying to
get a national partner
ship with Budweiser,
sell national licenses...
and I had never even
heard of it," says Travis
Presnell. The Presnell
brothers stewed on
the concept for six
months before enlist
ing Allen and taking
action. Opening in
April allowed the new
branch to get its feet
wet before the return
of students and foot
ball fans this fall.
Zingo brings an
innovative concept to
late-night transporta
tion: moving clients
and their cars back
home safely. A Zingo
driver (fully insured)
rides a Di Blasi collapsible motorbike to meet
you, places the folding bike in the trunk of
your car, and then delivers you, your friends
and the car to your final destination. It's
a simple process that bypasses the messy
issues associated with drinking and next-day
car-retrieval. The drivers, .although employed
by Zingo, really act as independent contrac
tors. "It's whatever the driver is comfortable
doing," says Travis. "He can say, 'Listen, you
all can only have this many people.' It's up to
the discretion of the driver to handle a situa
tion." Just as Zingo driver's are self-employed,
the separate locations around the country are
also relatively independent. Although each
shares the Zingo name, concept, and proce
dure, each operation is free to set its own
hours and rates.
Since its opening, Zingo Athens has
obtained a sponsorship from local Budweiser
distributor Leon Farmer. Farmer's company and
Zingo have a reciprocal advertising strategy in
which any poster for either company should
sport both logos. Farmer sponsors not only
Zingo, but also WatchDawgs and the nonprofit
Safe Campuses Now. Keith Sims, the execu
tive director of Safe Campuses Now, says she
originally heard about the Zingo concept from
Farmer: "In the spring he said, what do you
think about this? And I said that's wonder
ful because it refutes all those excuses that
people have." (Excuses, that is, for driving
home drunk.) Sims
is enthusiastic about
the options that Zingo
provides for the com
munity, but worries the
company could go the
way of the late-night
bus routes Athens
tried out in 2001,
which "never caught
on." Just like any new
transportation option,
Sims says that students
have to integrate it
into their routine.
Although Zingo's
service seems to offer
an excellent solution
to drunk driving, there
are still hurdles for the
company. In a town of
college students, the
$15 student rate (first
three miles included,
$2 per mile thereafter,
and $20 being the base
rate for non-students) can still seem steep
when a taxi usually costs less. Also, Thursday,
Friday and Saturday nights prove busiest
for Zingo Athens—so much so that Presnell
says people often leave early from bars or
call ahead to guarantee a ride. But for those
unwilling to wait on a cab or an Italian motor
bike on busy weekends, driving is still tempt
ing. Sims' comment? "It's not worth their life,
somebody else's life, or them getting arrested
and ruining their chances for something down
the road because they are too cheap to spend
that money on a safer ride home."
Lindsey Stier
The tiny scooters pack up neatly to fit in the trunk
of a client’s car while Zingo’s man drives.
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