SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco's efforts to trim costs, cut down on vehicle abuse, and reduce carbon emissions are hindered by an inability to track vehicle mileage on city vehicles, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

The software used by the City Administrator's Office, which oversees approximately 800 city vehicles, cannot track or report mileage, according to a city report on how to reduce government's carbon footprint.

Tom Fung, director of fleet management, said the system that oversees the city's fleet uses a combination of paper documents and a computer software program that offers no ability to capture up-to-date information about vehicles, such as check-out tracking, fuel usage, and mileage.

"We are hampered by a system that doesn't have full functionality of a modern system," Fung said. "It's hard for us to know exactly what individual drivers are doing."

A request for proposals under review would solicit bids for installing a system to provide real-time data about each city vehicle's mileage, fuel use, and check-out status. Tracking mileage could also crack down on city workers abusing city vehicle usage.

Fung said he hopes the new tracking system will be in place in less than a year.