Fleet Sharing: Moving Toward a Greener, More Efficient City Government
June 3, 2009
The biggest challenge we are facing in City Hall is a budget shortfall. We need to use this crisis to rethink how we can use our dollars more efficiently. The answers are there. We just have to be willing to look for them.
One solution is creating a fleet sharing program to dramatically reduce the number of vehicles in our city’s fleet. That means fewer cars used by workers across all departments, a reduction in carbon emissions, and big savings for the city.
Just last month, Washington, D.C. started a similar program using a new service from Zipcar, a company based in the Boston area. The results are extraordinary.
Washington predicts a savings of $6.6 million over the next five years. The excess cars and vans are being sold through auctions to generate revenue for the District. In all, they were able to reduce the number of vehicles in operation from 360 to just 58.
Boston has 1,125 vehicles in its fleet not including police, fire, and schools. Of those, 871 are cars and vans, each with an average cost of ownership of $10,000. If we can reduce our fleet by just 100 cars, we would save 1 million dollars per year, every year.
When City departments have to share vehicles, they are forced to be more accountable with their time. Workers will have to reserve cars in advance, which will place an added value on driving time. This will decrease unnecessary mileage and increase productivity.
Washington’s cars will soon be equipped with GPS units that provide “geo-fencing” – a system that automatically triggers an alarm when the car goes outside a set boundary. Department heads will be alerted when city vehicles are driven outside their intended zones.
Slimming down our City’s fleet would also help make Boston greener. The program would expedite our conversion to energy-efficient hybrid and electric vehicles. With a fleet sharing program, we could have stations around the city that would hook up electric cars to our power grid, and a computerized way to track how long cars need to be charged depending on their usage.
Our history in Boston is rich in creating innovation. But when it comes to creating an efficient City government, we have to look to the future. Fleet sharing is one place to start.
