Planning for a Sustainable Future: Inver Grove Heights Efficient City Fleet

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to identify actions the City of Inver Grove Heights can take to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicle fleet, reduce fleet management costs, and reduce fleet emissions. This paper begins with an overview of the City of Inver Grove Heights existing fleet management conditions including fleet composition, expenses, emissions, and replacement process. The next section of this report reviews fleet management frameworks currently followed by government agencies. Next, fleet management case studies are presented of two local government organizations in Minnesota based on defined criteria. Each case study showcases how local government organizations have implemented fleet management practices included in the previous fleet management framework section to also achieve similar fleet management goals as defined by the City of Inver Grove Heights. Additional information regarding the organizations' fleet management policies and policy outcomes are included. Drawing from transferrable lessons learned from a literature review of government fleet management frameworks and case studies collected through interviews, best management practices and policy options are presented for the City of Inver Grove Heights updated fleet management process and are evaluated based on a cost-benefit analysis. This paper concludes with final recommendations for the City of Inver Grove Heights to increase the fuel efficiency, reduce fleet management costs, and reduce vehicle emissions based on this multi-method analysis. The Cost Benefit Analysis presented in this paper suggests that the greatest impact on all three goals could be achieved by reducing inefficient driving behavior (Fig. 16.1 through 16.4). It is recommended the City continues to collect more comprehensive vehicle use data to identify the cause of inefficient driving behaviors and to identify strategies to potentially reduce inefficient driving behavior, such as through employee education.