Montgomery County has ended its expensive car-sharing program, a green-friendly initiative expected to be so revolutionary that County Executive Ike Leggett once pitched it to the White House.
The program was abandoned in April, unable to recover from its debut, when the county used taxpayer funds to pay more than $1,000 for each hour the service was used, according to records.
Under the program, the county paid $1,100 a month per car to Enterprise Rent-a-Car for hybrid vehicles, available for county employees to check out by the hour.
But each of the 30 cars rented by the county was used less than an hour per month by employees during the initial months of the program, making the per hour rate of using each vehicle about $1,300.
The county’s goal was to reduce its carbon footprint and stock of cars.
Records obtained by The Washington Examiner, however,show the county phased out the program in recent months.
By the time the program was abandoned, the county was paying for only seven cars, and usage had started to pick up. Between January and late April, the county paid $33,954.32 for about 1,600 hours of car usage, or $21 an hour.
Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spend on often-parked cars, Leggett doesn’t consider the shuttered service a failure.
“It didn’t do as well in terms of participation and usage,” spokesman Patrick Lacefield conceded. “But is it a good idea for the county to buy fewer cars and save money doing that? The answer is yes.”
Lacefield said the county saved half a million dollars by not purchasing more vehicles and avoiding maintenance costs. However, critics said it was the county’s unwillingness to scrap more cars — destroying incentive to use the rental hybrids — that led to the downfall of the program.
The county executive included the car-sharing program in a letter to the White House, outlining ideas for the federal government to mirror.
CountyStat, Montgomery’s oversight program, determined buying and maintaining a hybrid car would have been several thousand dollars cheaper per car than renting from Enterprise after four years. And Zipcar, a similar service, costs about $10 an hour for Washington-area residents.
Examiner Staff Writer Alan Suderman contributed to this report.
