Living like a King! Maryland’s Montgomery County spends $1300 per hour for one hour of car-share
(Source: Washington Examiner & Washington Post)
A car-sharing program intended to save Montgomery County money has ended up costing $1,300 per hour of driving.
The county paid more than $100,000 for the program, which was used just 16 times in 3 1/2 months. As of April 24, the 28 cars have been used fewer than 84 hours since the pilot program began 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. Even better, taking a ride in a luxury sedan costs $60 an hour, according to a local limousine company.
Only two departments in the county administration have used the program thus far (Department of Transportation and Dept. of Technology Services).
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.”
TransportGooru Musings:
Looks like the County has taken acute from the County Executive,Mr. Ike Leggett who spent nearly $500,000 of tax payer dollars towards his security detail last year. Wait! This gets better. It is not the only time the county executive has been in the news for lavishing tax payer dollars on himself. He has come under fire before. Last year it was over a $65,000 bathroom, complete with a shower in his work place paid from tax payer dollars. Then, his security detail said using a public restroom would expose him to danger.
Oh, if that makes you wonder whether Montgomery County is somewhere near Baghdad or Kabul, Afghanistan, you are wrong. It is just outside Washington, DC, the capital of the free world and it is definitely not the most dangerous place on earth that warrants building a toilet @ $65,000 inside an Government-owned building. For the financially bent minds, all this madness is happening when the County is exploring ways to trim a budget deficit of $500 million. How about that for a fine example of financial management!
