San Francisco city employees asked to cut back on driving to save money

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- For some employees, one of the perks of working for the city of San Francisco is using a city owned car. But that bonus could become a thing of the past.

On Tuesday, Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced legislation that would require the city fleet to be cut by 25 percent every three years.

"It's going to make our government more efficient which every resident wants," he said.

San Francisco has more than 7,100 vehicles in its fleet. The supervisor says about 1,400 are non-essential and those are the ones his measure would effect. Vehicles such as fire trucks and police cars that are critical to government would be exempt.

Passenger cars and trucks deemed non-essential would have a GPS tracking device installed to determine if they are spending wasted time in the parking lots.

"If they are not being utilized we're not going to buy new ones when their time is due and to compensate for the availability. We'll mandate when at all possible city employees use car sharing as the primary mode of transportation," explained Farrell.

But there will likely be pushback. Several department heads asked for waivers from a 2010 city environmental measure designed to thin the fleet.

City administrator Naomi Kelly supports this latest effort, but believes the devil is in the details. " And that's where we need to sit down with those departments with the big fleets and see how realistic that goal is, but that's not to say we shouldn't push towards it," she said.

San Francisco bills itself as a transit-first city. Supervisor Farrell says Chicago implemented a similar plan and has saved millions of dollars and reduced its the carbon footprint.