Last week, Philadelphia’s NBC10 reported that city-owned electric vehicles frequently queue up at public charging stations along with everyday motorists, causing longer wait times for all. Reporters visited charging stations numerous times during work hours and routinely found city employees either waiting in line for a charger or waiting for their vehicle to finish charging, which can take up to an hour.

Some city employees told NBC10’s Claudia Vargas that they used the downtime to catch up on paperwork, while others sat in their cars apparently watching videos on their phones. Inspectors with Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) spend their workdays going to buildings and job sites, and any time spent waiting to charge is wasted.

Motorists complained about having to wait in line along with workers drawing a city salary, with one noting that city vehicles should “have a way to charge overnight in like their own facility.”

“It turns out they do,” Vargas reported. Philadelphia has 107 chargers to serve its fleet of 261 electric vehicles, but the chargers are poorly apportioned. NBC10 found that many of the city’s chargers are located at city-owned repair facilities, while others are installed at police departments and prison complexes that have no electric vehicles.