Car-sharing program gets slow start in Montgomery
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
May 12, 2009
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| Montgomery County officials touted the car-sharing program as a way to help the environment while saving money when they introduced it in January. (AP) |
Montgomery County paid more than $100,000 for a new car-sharing program that was used 16 times in 3 1/2 months, according to county data.
As of April 24, the 28 fuel-efficient cars have been used a total of 83.5 hours since the pilot program was introduced in January. With the county paying Enterprise Rent-A-Car a flat rate of $1,100 a month for each hybrid and subcompact car, the county has essentially been paying more than $1,300 an hour to use the cars.
By contrast, the private car-sharing program Zipcar charges drivers in the area less than $10 an hour to rent a car on a weekday.
Taking a limousine ride in a luxury sedan costs $60 an hour, according to a local limo company.
The program’s goal is to let county employees rent fuel-efficient cars by the hour that can be easily picked up and dropped off on county property — reducing the need for county-owned vehicles.
County officials touted it as a way to help the environment while saving money when they introduced it in January.
The District’s government recently expanded a similar pilot car-sharing program that started in October, and officials there said they have been able to trim 360 vehicles from its fleet and expect savings of $6.6 million over five years.
Employees in only two Montgomery departments, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Technology Services, have used the cars.
County officials said the slow start was because of county employees’ reluctance to give up their own county-assigned vehicles. But with plans to take away 100 “underutilized” vehicles, more employees should start using the car-share program and make it pay off, said Millie Souders, the county’s Fleet Management Services’ division chief.
“People have been reluctant to sign up for and use them only because of what they’ve had available to them in the past,” Souders said. “I have all the confidence in the world that everybody will start using these vehicles and we will have to expand the number of car shares.”
She added that the car-sharing program would help the county avoid having to replace 90 cars in its fleet this year, which would save the county $1.5 million.
County Council members are considering cutting the car-sharing program from 28 cars to 18 but have indicated that they support its concept.
“We talked about reducing the car-share program in part because it wasn’t being utilized, not because we don’t support it,” said Council Vice President Roger Berliner, D-Potomac/Bethesda. “It just was having growing pains.”
