Here is a link to the company that administers my companies commuter benefit
http://www.myshps.com/commuter/overview.stm
If gives a brief example of how much one would safe if they used the current commuter benefit which people keep saying this is identical to yet also say you get $20 which is where my confusion comes from. If it is like the current commuter benefit if you plug in the $240s for the bike commuting credit on their example $40k worker you'll end up saving $57 a year using pre-tax instead of post tax money.

What they did when I was in NYC was take$50 out of my paycheck for the first two pay periods in a month and put it into an account just like a medical flexible spending account. Then I could buy rail tickets through the website or or send in receipts to get reimbursed for purchases. It was limited to monthly charge though. At the time I could only use $100 of pretax money per a month towards my $300+ rail ticket and no more so I'm not sure how it would work for say the new set of wheels I bought. The wheels are good for more then just a month unlike the train ticket or parking passes so hopefully they would allow you use some saved up pre-tax money for a bulk purchase and not have to spend $20 a month on a layaway program to get stuff.

Since my company already deals with a vendor to do this once the vendor goes online I think I'll actually have that option. I know the vendor administrator in my company so once the bill passes I may ask about it in passing but that would be it I don't want to push anything in this layoff happy company.