Bailing out bicycling

This weekend I was catching up on the variety of things that have made their way into the bailout package, and I found one very interesting little tidbit: Congressman Earl Blumenauer had a tax incentive for bike commuting that got included in the overall end package. This unrelated addition was presumably to get Congressman Blumenauer to vote for the overall package (which he did not end up doing).

This added provision provides a tax incentive to employers to provide bikes and cover expenses related to riding to work. This new bike commuting incentive joins incentives that employers currently have for encouraging carpooling or using public transit. This is potentially a boon for commuting by bike, as it means that now employers have an incentive to provide the facilities to bike to work.

So, what's the challenge? Awareness. There ended up being so much in this new bailout bill, that its highly unlikely that employers (particularly smaller employers) are going to know all the different aspects of the bill or take advantage of some of the cycling incentives. The best bet is for bike shops to make sure that their staff is well educated on this incentive. When individuals are shopping for bikes that they could use to run errands or use in some transportation form, then pass along the incentive information.

Building awareness of policy changes like this are often left up to the community organizers and enthusiasts, which is why I'm writing about this here, and hopefully, you'll talk to your employers about it as well.