I read on another thread a few weeks ago that the massive $700B financial system bailout passed by the US Congress included a bunch fine print add-ons (oh, what a surprise). This is NOT a thread to discuss the financial follies going on in our nation's capital, which by itself is a topic of endless fury, frustration and gloom.

Back on topic: One of the bailout add-ons approved is a $20 dollar per month tax rebate that employers can claim in order to make payments to their employees who are regular bicycle commuters, for bike parts purchase or maintenance. So the way I understand this, I ask my employer if they are willing to go along with this, and if they are, I somehow give them some proof of the money I am spending to bike commute daily and request the payout. In theory this sounds easy. I can easily blow through $240 per year on bike commuting parts and gear. The question is how much of a hassle it will be for me and for my employer.

I am tempted to go after this, not for the money, but on principle. My employer offers free monthly bus passes (value about $40) to anyone who will take the bus to work at least 3 days a week. Out of 1000 people, maybe 5 or 6 take the bus. My employer also has a deal with a vanpool company to pay for 100 percent of the gasoline cost for any group of 6 or 7 employees who can form up a vanpool and use it daily. About 30 or 40 people at work take advantage of that huge freebie, because then it only costs those vanpoolers about $60 per month per person for the van rental. I would guess our company spends many hundreds a month on gas charges for each of those vanpools. So, my employer has set a precedent to pay to encourage people to use alternate ways to work besides one car per person.

I bike commute almost every work day, year round. I want to see if this bike commute payout that was buried inside the great bailout of 2008 is a real deal, or just another bunch of hot air hoopla from inside the beltway. I'll post my progress on this task from time to time here. Anyone else who wants to try at your workplace, more power to you, and share the feedback from your employer. Let's see if somebody in our crowd can be among the first persons to be compensated by the US government for payment to bicycle commute. Should be interesting.

I convinced several of the commuters here at my company to go along with me and ask HR to get on board with it. HR wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, but they told us there were several other items in the bil with which they HAD to comply, so they would investigate setting up the bike-commute stuff after they'd done the others.

Personally, I'd be happy if they'd just put the money towards lockers. I changed buildings in October. In my old building I could use as many lockers as I wanted to at no charge. In this new building I have to use the fitness center lockers, and they charge me $7/month per locker. And, for that price, officially I'm not supposed to leave my stuff overnight.

So far despite my constant updates to them, and after talking to them about it how this works our Human Resource Dept has totally ignored it. I work for a large health care system, you would think they would want to promote something like this.

But like so many large companies, my voice falls on deaf ears. Plus there isn't enough of us that ride to be a squeaky wheel.

Here is an article in the Chicago Tribune about this: https://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...,1747898.story

To me, it just looks like your employer doesn't pay this, you are just able to claim $20 out of your paycheck pretax every month for bike related purchases. Kind of like FSA. I pay for my train ticket (el) pretax out of my paycheck. It looks like you can't piggy back with this plan though, so if you get your train ticket pretax then you can't do the $20/month pretax. My unofficial take on this...hopefully they can't improve it.

I don't understand it, and the state agency I work for won't look into offering this benefit.

What a plan.

And if it the pretax shenanigans saves me $5.60 a month ... big deal.

I want my $20!

My HR department is looking into it already. We do commuter benefits for vanpool and bus passes, and there are quite a few bike commuters (at our California facility; I'm the only year-rounder in Seattle). From what I've heard so far, there's some compliance issues that they're hashing out (things that weren't clearly defined in the Bill) before implementation. The HR folks have at least been working on it.

I wrote to my HR folks weeks ago. They didn't even bother to respond.

If your company has a petty cash drawer, you can supplement your bicycle needs that way too.

I'm the only current year round commuter at my workplace but another cyclist and potential commuter is talking to HR about getting this program started. There are 3 of us who have at some point cycled to work so that gives it a better chance than just me trying. I won't be upset if nothing comes of it but I'll gladly take $20 a month. At that rate, in 9 years, they'll have paid for my new commuter