Last weekend, I was picked up from the Los Angeles airport by a Zipster in a Zipcar and I zipped through Los Angeles all week long. From the sound of that, you may be thinking that I took advantage of the medical marijuana license offered to me seemingly around every corner in California during my trip — but this is not so.

Instead, I examined a new way to use my driver's license. I was introduced to Zipcar, a company that promotes a car-sharing program on the campus of the University of California-Los Angeles.

Meghan Myers, a friend and a Zipster who works for UCLA, is able to pick up a car in specific parking lots around campus by swiping her Zipcard across the windshield. The car is unlocked by the card, and Myers can jump in the car and drive it all over Los Angeles for an hourly fee. Included in the fee is car insurance and gas, no matter how far you take the car. If the car runs out of gas, there is a gas card available in the car to fill up. When finished with the car, Myers drives the car back to the parking space where she picked it up, and checks out with her Zipcard.

I think Marquette's campus could use some Zipcars.

Although Milwaukee has a convenient transportation system, Zipcars offer an even more convenient alternative when buses just don't make the cut. Taking the bus sometimes doubles a journey's time, and buses do not always get us where we need to be. Zipcars would allow us to expand our lives even more so outside of the Marquette bubble to enjoy the city and all it has to offer. Getting to that internship interview a half hour away would be much easier as well.

We already share a lot as Marquette students, and car sharing is the next step in transportation for our campus. Consider the environmental benefits: according to the Zipcar Web site, "After joining Zipcar, 90 percent of our members drove 5,500 miles or less per year. That adds up to more than 32 million gallons of crude oil left in the ground — or 219 gallons saved per Zipster."

If students had the option of depending on a service like Zipcar (there are other car-sharing programs such as Chicago-based I-Go), we may be less likely to bring cars to campus, allowing for less traffic congestion, money saved for parking spaces and overall car maintenance. Nobody needs to be reminded that it is difficult to find a parking space in downtown Milwaukee, especially around Marquette's campus.

The city of Los Angeles has taken the cue and latched onto the car share program, because it has seen its success on college campuses and with corporate businesses. Last week, the Los Angeles City Council announced that starting this summer, the city itself will have Zipcars available to citizens in the neighborhoods around UCLA and the University of Southern California who become members of the program.

"Car sharing has been proven to reduce traffic congestion and vehicle emissions, increase transit ridership and save users money compared to owning and operating private vehicles," Council member Bill Rosendahl, who pushed the program through the Council's Transportation Committee, told the Los Angeles Times.

I don't know why I didn't come up with car sharing. It's a beautiful thing. I've never had a car on campus, but I've borrowed my friends' cars countless times when the bus was not an option. Though I'm graduating this year, I think giving future Marquette students the chance to be Zipsters would be a step for Marquette toward easy transportation and toward opening up the world beyond the campus borders a bit more for students.

More than 100 college campuses such as the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Minnesota offer their students the Zipcar option. Marquette should join them and give the green light for a car-sharing program so students can zip into the future.