(Photo courtesy of Enterprise CarShare)

After four years of being D.C.’s slightly cheaper Zipcar option, Enterprise CarShare is joining the graveyard of car and ridesharing companies that couldn’t survive on D.C.’s competitive roads.

“After carefully monitoring and evaluating demand for local car-sharing service for the past several years, Enterprise has decided to scale back its car-sharing operations in Washington D.C.,” the company said in a statement, citing lower-than-expected consumer demand. “The local program was not able to establish itself as a sustainable transportation alternative for the long term.”

The company is also pulling out of the Boston, Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco markets.

Enterprise CarShare stopped accepting reservations in Chicago in mid-June, telling customers it was “a direct effect of significant vandalism, theft and fraud.” A spokeswoman said that crime “was not a primary factor in its long-term business decision” to pull out of the Chicago market; she didn’t answer if vandalism and theft were also significant problems in D.C.

The company plans to continue carsharing operations where they “make sense” in Toronto, New York, Philadelphia, and London.

Existing reservations in the District will be honored through the end of July.

The cast of D.C.’s carsharing characters has changed significntly over the past few years, as studies have shown more and more households foregoing vehicle ownership.

Whereas Zipcar once had D.C. to itself, a fleet of fleets has tried to get in on the action. Car2go is still going strong with its one-way trip model, Getaround still operates a kind of Airbnb for cars, and General Motors entered the market last year with the more traditional Maven, while RelayRides morphed into Turo and Hertz On Demand has already come and gone. In the ridesharing realm, the homegrown Split, Sidecar, and Hailo all tried and failed to compete with Uber and Lyft (Via is still in it).

As for Enterprise, they are now “recalibrating” to focus on business-to-business and university car-sharing. The company says it is already working with parking garages private lots, and local agencies to transfer back car-sharing parking spaces.

More:
D.C.-Based Split Ends Ridehailing Service After A Year
Report: D.C. Is The Fourth-Best U.S. City To Live Without A Car
With GM’s Maven, D.C. Has Another Carsharing Option
Zipcar Is Launching A One-Way Service, Including To Baltimore
Car2Go Adds Mercedes-Benz Options To Its D.C. Fleet