A new Biden administration directive instructs federal employees to prioritize making sustainable choices while on official travel.
The directive tells civil servants to rent electric vehicles on official travel when the cost of that vehicle is less than or equal to the most affordable comparable option.
It also directs them to use rail, rather than planes or cars, for trips of less than 250 miles if rail is an available and affordable option. Employees will also be expected to use public transportation when traveling locally.
Public officials should be forced to use public transportation only like city bikes, buses, and rail. We would see changes in our infastructure and public transit almost instantaneously
This directive isn’t going to apply to anyone with any kind of authority or decision making capability. This is just going to be a bunch of underpaid schlubs like the rest of us.
It won’t necessarily have the desired effect if they are well off and live in a wealthy area. Wealthy neighborhoods and central districts might get over served compared to low or middle income ones, which does happen a lot in the US.
Forcing them to live in a “developing” neighborhood and use public transit might help.
If the EV is the cheapest rental car, wouldn’t they already be expected to choose it?
It’s really hard to get funding to rent a vehicle in the first place for many agencies.
I didn’t even know you could rent electric cars. Where are you supposed to charge them if your hotel doesn’t have charging stations?
Rail is really only going to be an option between major cities so limited scope there. Using rail and subways is smarter than driving through a city most of the time.
Fast chargers are much more common now and more are being installed all the time. I just did an 1800 mile road trip through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico. It was surprisingly easy to find charging, but I did have to plan ahead more than in a gas car.
This directive is largely pointless, which is pretty normal for government travel. Absent orders to the contrary, it’s still “lowest-price option that gets you to the destination in time.” 9 times out of 10, that’ll still be the contract airline fare, a basic per diem hotel, and the lowest-bid compact car at the destination.
I’m part of a pretty large subset of government folks that travel largely to large installations (military bases, etc) with no guarantee of EV charging stations because facilities funds have been constricted for decades. The per diem hotels don’t usually have much charger infrastructure either, which means government EV renters will have to run around looking for fast chargers in unfamiliar towns. I’m not at all unusual in this regard; I think it’s pretty unlikely that a given federal govt worker will be able to catch a train to their TDY.
The train thing is goofy except for the northeast and maybe California. I’m not in those places, there isn’t a train station in my zip code, and it looks like POV travel is a no-go now so I can’t leave my immediate vicinity without a rental.
Outside of big population centers, this new rule has no real effect other than to make a few new checkboxes on our travel forms… “did you consider rail travel for this trip? Y/n”, “was an EV rental available at a rate equal to the compact car rate? Y/n
The only thing that would really work here would be a requirement and a subsidy. “Rail travel is required unless the total cost of the rail option is greater than 125% of the air travel option.” “Government travelers are required to rent EVs unless the EV rental price is more than double the cost of a conventional compact.” You’ll also need an “all government buildings shall provide EV charging for official travel.” …and probably a “Government travelers with an EV rental may exceed hotel per-diem by up to $15/night if the hotel has EV charging infrastructure.”
