Commentary

Montgomery County Ends Car Sharing Program

Montgomery County, Maryland established a car-sharing program for county employees in the hopes that it could reduce its carbon footprint and get its employees out of their cars. It didn’t work, according to the Washington Examiner, and the program was closed down in April 2010.

According to the Examiner:

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.

Even though usage had picked up, the program was too expensive to justify continuing it. At least the county recognized the error of its ways.