TheWashCycle

DC's busy bicycle legislative agenda, part 2

Last week I wrote about three bills before the DC Council, primarily the Vision Zero bill, but as hinted at in the title, there is still more bicycle-relevant legislation before the Council. 

First of all, there's the Transportation Benefits Equity Amendment Act Of 2019. A similar bill was introduced during the last session, but it never made it to a committee vote. As with the 2017, the goal is again to make commuter benefits more fair, but has the added benefit of encouraging more transit, biking and walking. This bill however has some changes from the 2017 version. The new bill

• Allows an employer who offers an employee a parking benefit to increase its financial contribution to the employee's health coverage if the employee declines both the parking benefit and the transportation benefit (for vanpools or transit only) such that the increased contribution equals the market value of the parking benefit offered. I'm not sure of the reason for this option, but my gut tells me its tax related. 
• Still allows employers is to pay a $100 Clean Air Compliance fee for each employer offered parking, but in the new bill, that money just goes into the general fund instead of the Transportation Demand Management fund.
• Gives employers additional options to (a) quit offering free parking (b) Create a Transportation Demand Management plan that will cut the number who driver or take a taxi to work by 10% in per year until 25% or less of all employees are driving/taxiing to work. That plan will have to approved by DDOT and annual reports are needed to prove it is working. If it doesn't work then they have to offer the benefit or pay the compliance fee.
• Change the method for calculating the value of parking from the one used by the IRS to one based on advertised prices or one determined by, and justified by, the employer. I'll note that I could not find the one the IRS used as identified in the code 132(f)(5)(C).
• Exempts employers who own their own parking or have a lease that predates the bill's effective date. 

When the bill last came up, there was concern that this act actually didn't create equity but rather hurt poor drivers to the benefit of wealthy cyclists, pedestrians and transit users. Or that it would result in more gentrification.  Or that instead we should get rid of all transportation subsidies (amen). There was also concern about the regulatory burden. 

Getting rid of all the subsidies, while a good idea, is difficult, so while a good idea, it's not one DC can really do. I think people who say this will hurt the poor are either ill-informed about who drives and who bikes or are arguing in bad faith. 

All of the changes, to me, are OK or good except the exemption for employers who own their own parking. I'm not sure what the thinking is - except that maybe people who've built their own parking can't simply disinvest in it - but it undermines the benefits of the bill. 

The second bill of import here is the budget bill which includes $500,000 for a congestion pricing study. That study has gotten most of the press, but it is by no means the only important element to cyclists; though it is a big deal.

Congestion pricing, charging motorists a fee to enter congested areas, is gaining momentum in U.S. cities. New York recently approved congestion pricing for drivers entering the central business district of Manhattan, beginning in 2021. The money would be used to fix the city’s ailing subway. Several other cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, also are considering congestion pricing as a way to alleviate gridlock, take cars off the roads and encourage transit use.

District officials hope the study will analyze how the city could implement congestion pricing to help reduce the number of non-D.C. drivers on city streets, identify pricing strategies and address equity concerns.

[Cheh's] proposal from the Committee on Transportation and the Environment requires the results of the study be made public by July 2020.

“Specifically, the study should evaluate and plan for the tolling of the roads into the District consistent with the tolling of those same roads by Virginia,” the committee’s budget document said.

The council could also determine how to spend any money raised.

D.C. Council members Charles Allen and Jack Evans explicitly spoke in support of the proposal at a committee markup.

In addition, the bill budgets more resources for enforcement and recommends more as well.

The Mayor called for $2,766,000 to support the Vision Zero initiative through rush hour towing and bike lane enforcement.

The Committee is pleased to see this investment in bicycle lane enforcement, particularly after hearing during oversight that enforcement of bicycle lane parking laws has dropped significantly over the past few years. This increase in the number of officers patrolling bicycle lanes will contribute to cyclist safety and overall street safety. In addition, the Mayor’s Budget Support Act includes a subtitle that will allow parking enforcement officers to mail tickets to vehicles that drive away before officers can serve a notice of infraction in person or by affixation, a practice that has made bicycle lane enforcement difficult. The Committee was encouraged to learn during oversight that the Agency has developed technology that will make it possible for officers to issue tickets in these circumstances and believes that this will make the Agency’s bicycle lane enforcement even more effective. In addition to implementing this technology, the Committee recommends that DPW continue to explore ways to make the bicycle lane enforcement team more responsive to street users, such as through social media, to allow cyclists to quickly report and end bicycle lane blockages.

The committee recommended more Sunday enforcement of bike lane violations 

...it is critical... that we keep our bike and bus lanes clear seven days a week.

And the committee increased funding for public space enforcement by $360,000 to add 3 more inspectors.

The Committee has concerns regarding DDOT’s efforts to ensure utility companies and their contractors restore a street to the condition it was in before the companies undertook excavation in the public space. According to post-oversight hearing responses, there were 340 citations issued in FY 2017 to utility companies for failing to restore the public space to its original condition. However, that number fell to 153 in FY 2018. In addition, in FY 2018, DDOT public space inspectors found nearly 98% of excavations were restored to their original condition after work by a utility in the public space was completed. The Committee routinely hears from residents who provide information on instances in which contractors failed to restore the public space to its original condition, often at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians in the form of unrestored bike lanes and unpainted crosswalks. The Committee believes that this high compliance number is not a result of utility companies restoring the public space to its original condition 98% of the time, but rather that DDOT public space inspectors are spread too thin to enforce the public space utility work requirements as strictly as they should be. The Committee believes the volume of new construction sites in the District has left DDOT’s public space inspectors short-handed. The staff is overburdened attempting to keep up with the number of sites they must visit on a daily basis. 

The committee, however, expresses concern about safety and mobility funding and the slow pace of the Eastern Downtown Protected Bike lane project, providing funding for the later. 

The proposed capital budget allocates $16,960,000 in FY 2020 and $62,684,000 over the six-year CIP for projects that have a primary focus of improving safety and efficiency of the District's transportation system. Most of these projects are pedestrian and cyclist focused with an aim to achieve the District’s Vision Zero goals of zero fatalities and serious injuries to travelers of the District’s transportation system. Subprojects of this master capital project include: the Crosstown Bicycle Lane, the Arboretum Bridge and Trail, and street sign improvements.

Although the Committee is pleased with this investment in safety for the District’s most vulnerable road users, there are lingering concerns about the capital funding in the years beyond FY 2020. Each year the funds allocated shrink, from $14,809,000 in FY 2021 down to $5,538,000 in FY 2025. Given the District’s ambitious efforts to increase bike lanes and revamp intersections to help meet our Vision Zero goals, the Committee believes the funding should be increasing each year, not decreasing. The Committee does not have the available funding to increase the funds allocated in each year but urges DDOT to increase its investment in the Safety and Mobility Capital project in the years beyond FY 2020

The District has a dire need to create a two-directional north-south bike lane in order to accommodate the growth in District neighborhoods, maintain safety, and become a more sustainable city. The neighborhoods at the north end of downtown, including U Street NW and Shaw, have seen an increase in bike commuting trips in recent years. Although there are multiple east-west dedicated bicycle facilities traversing the areas in and around downtown, only 15th Street NW provides contiguous north-south protected facilities in the city core. This leads to a large downtown north-south gap in the protected bike facility network between the Metropolitan Branch Trail and 15th Street NW. For these reasons, DDOT commissioned the Eastern Downtown Protected Bike Lane study. The purpose of the project is to fill in the north south bike lane gap by developing the final design for a new protected bike lane that will connect central DC neighborhoods to downtown, as well as existing east-west bicycle facilities.

The Eastern Downtown Protected Bike Lane study has been completed and as of February 2017 both options for the bike lane, 6th and 9th Street, are at 30% design. The community has been waiting for over two years for DDOT to make a decision between the two options so that design can be finished, and improvements started. The Committee urges DDOT to make a decision and proceed with the project. The Committee has allocated $300,000 from the Safety and Mobility Capital Project to fund the completion of the design for whichever street DDOT decides to build the protected bike lane.

The committee recommended additional money for protected bike lane construction

The proposed capital budget allocates $16,960,000 in FY 2020 for Safety & Mobility projects, which includes support for expanding bicycle lanes and infrastructure, such as $1,215,987 for the Crosstown Bicycle Lane project. The Committee applauds DDOT’s progress in expanding bike lanes across the city over the past decade but recognizes that there is still much progress to be made and that many of the District’s bike lanes are not protected. Protected bike lanes are essential to the safety of cyclists and to increasing the number of cyclists in the District; if people feel unsafe riding in the District, they will not do it. Cyclists are equally entitled to use the road as drivers, and a protected lane keeps cars from infringing on the cyclist’s portion of the road, not just while driving but while parking as well.

Protected bike lanes also protect pedestrians, who will then use sidewalks without competitions from bikes and scooters. Additional protected bike lanes will require DDOT to improve their reaction time to fix damaged or downed separators that pose risks to cyclists in the bike lane. Just last year, the Committee heard from a cyclist who hit a downed lane separator, severely injuring himself. He reported the issue to 311 and reached out to the Committee, who in turn notified DDOT. Despite this, it still took DDOT over three weeks to get the lane cleared and the separators fixed. From what the Committee routinely hears from cyclists, that repair happened much quicker than most. The Committee urges DDOT to increase its construction of protected bike lanes and to improve its maintenance of those lanes

The bill calls for $115,000 for a dockless-scooter (and potentially bike) parking program.

Since the launch of DDOT’s Dockless Demonstration Project for dockless scooters and bicycles in 2017, the Committee has routinely heard complaints about scooters being left in inconvenient locations, such as in pedestrian walkways, handicap parking spaces, or on private property. To address the same issue, the county of Arlington, Virginia, recently began creating street parking spaces for scooters and bikes only. The Committee believes it would be beneficial to bring this same idea to the District as it applies to dockless scooters (legally known as personal mobility devices). The Committee recommends the inclusion of a new Budget Support Act subtitle that would create of a Scooter Parking Pilot, which would require DDOT to establish parking spaces exclusively for use by personal mobility devices. Under the
pilot, DDOT would create at least one such parking spot per Business Improvement District (BID). The Committee does not intend to require personal mobility device users to park in a designated parking place; however, the Committee believes that if such spots are available, personal mobility device users will use them. Therefore, in line with the Budget Support Act subtitle included later in this report, the Committee recommends increasing (PSDV) Planning and Sustainability by $78,000 and 1.0 FTEs in FY 2020 and by $20,000 in FY 2021, and increasing (PSDV) Planning and Sustainability by $17,000 in one-time funds for DDOT to create a scooter parking pilot. 

In addition it

• funds a Safe Routes to School Program Specialist
• notes that DDOT will add 18 CaBi stations in the District and update the expansion guidelines of the Capital Bikeshare Development Plan as they have exhausted the old one
• funds the K Street Transitway, which DDOT says will include a bike lane
• increases scooter speed limits from 10 mph to 15 mph. 
• funds the redevelopment of Dave Thomas Circle ($35,000,000)
• funds the Tenley Plaza project, with one goal being to improve bicycle safety
• funds the Benning Road streetcar expansion which will also construct bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure along the four-mile
  corridor
• funds the New York Avenue Streetscape and Trail Project ( $34,248,000)
• funds the Ward Eight Streetscapes project ($26,579,000)

Finally, the Bicycle Advisory Council expansion act was rolled into the budget bill. 

The bicycle commuter benefit is dead (sort of) (for now)

As frequent readers here are aware, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that congress passed late last year made bicycle commuter benefits taxable, but the benefit isn't dead yet, and it could get better. 

It's not all dead, because employers can still deduct the cost of providing the benefit, but in 2018, employees will have to pay a tax on that. 

Reimbursements for qualified bicycle expenses paid on or after January 1, 2018 are deductible by the employer, but employees must include the reimbursement in the recipient’s income. 

And it could get better because

Beginning with the 2026 tax year, qualified bicycle commuting reimbursements will again be excludible from employees’ income, but will no longer be deductible by employers.

It will be interesting to see if there is an increase or decrease in employers offering the benefit this year and again in 2026 (or if anyone will bother to measure that). The measure is not expected to generate more than $50 million in revenue during the period of suspension - and I suspect it will be much less than $50 million. 

When the provision was proposed, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated it would cost $10 million over 10 years - but it didn't last that long. Blumenauer says the eliminating it would save $5 million a year, but I don't know where he gets that. I suspect it is from the Joint Committee's estimates, which only defined it as "less than $50 million". I'd be surprised if the Joint Committee was off by more than a factor of 5 (remember, employers can still deduct the cost of the benefit) back in 2007 and so I think the less than $50 million is more like $10 million or less.

What is unfortunate is that no one has done, or is likely to do, a study of the benefit's efficacy. Did it encourage more people to bike commute or did it just make things fairer? Did it help deal with the energy crisis? How much did it cost? I don't think we'll ever know now. 

Similar changes are being made to other transportation fringe benefits like transit benefits.

Beginning in 2018, employers may no longer deduct qualified transportation fringe benefits expenses, or any expenses for providing transportation for an employee to commute between his or her residence and place of employment, except as necessary for ensuring the employee’s safety. Previously, employers were able to deduct these expenses and the expenses were excludible from the employee’s income. While TCJA changed the employer’s ability to deduct the expenses, there was no change in an employee’s ability to exclude the expenses from his or her income.

The elimination of the parking and transit benefits deduction is expected to generate $17.7 billion in revenue over the next decade. Congress expects that increase in tax payments to be offset for employers by lower corporate tax rates established by the new tax law." But for bike commuters - I guess there's the other tax cuts?

Transportation benefits in DC will survive in part because the federal government is going to continue offering them (what do they care about taxes) and in part because DC law requires them for employers with more than 20 employees.

The Huffington Post posits that their is no budget or policy goal here, just an attempt to stick it to liberal city dwelling types who live on the East Coast. 

“It could certainly be that. Or it could just be one [senator] who had a bad experience with a cyclist,” said Ken McLeod, policy director at the League of American Bicyclists, a national advocacy group. “It’s a relatively innocuous benefit that doesn’t cost the federal government pretty much anything. It seems like it must be a personal or cultural thing rather than actual public policy.”

Perhaps this can be set right, and the benefit can be made better (can pay with pre-tax dollars, use it for bike sharing, parity, etc..)

Along with Blumenauer, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) is co-chair of the congressional bike caucus. He’s also a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, yet even he seemed blindsided by the shift in bike tax policy.

“We gotta change that,” Buchanan said. “I just haven’t focused on that but now that you brought it up, I will.”

DDOT and DOES hosting Commuter Benefits Information Sessions

I'm a little late to this, and I didn't go (this blog post is starting out swimmingly) but DDOT and DOES have hosted another Commuter Benefits Information Sessions  to help employers understand the 2016 Commuter Benefits Law. That law requires organizations with 20 or more employees to offer pre-tax or subsidized commuter benefits.

That would have included pre-tax bicycle commuter benefits, but - well - Congress killed that.  

Businesses that provide their employees with $20 per month to cover the expense of commuting by bicycle would also no longer be able to write off the benefit under the tax bill. Without that incentive, the relatively few employers offering the benefit may discontinue it, said Ken McLeod, policy director for the League of American Bicyclists.

Bicyclists can use the benefit to offset the cost of a new bicycle or pay for helmets, locks, lights or maintenance like new tires, McLeod said. The money doesn't count toward employee earnings, he said.

Getting rid of the bicycle benefit, which was adopted in 2009, would save the government a relatively low $5 million a year, McLeod said. By comparison, the parking benefit costs the government about $7.3 billion a year in foregone taxes, according to a report by TransitCenter, a transit advocacy group.

$5 million a year surprises me. I think when the bill went into effect they thought it would cost $1 million. I guess it's either a roaring success or a failure (depending on your perspective). I really wish they would have studied the program to see if it was cost-effective, but....that ship has maybe sailed. 

The House version of the tax bill retained the benefit, but the Senate version eliminated it even though more than 1,500 bicyclists contacted members of the Senate Finance Committee to try to persuade them to keep the write-off, he said.

"Growth in commuting by bicycle contributes to reducing congestion, promoting good health and supporting a low-cost mode of transportation for all Americans," 20 bicycle, community, and sports and outdoor industry groups said in a letter to the committee's chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and senior Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.

What bothers bicyclists the most, McLeod said, isn't so much the money, but "just that it feels like the federal government doesn't support biking.

"I don't know if that is something the legislators meant to express," he said, "but that's something we're definitely hearing."

Still, employers can still comply with the DC law by offering a bicycle commuter a reimbursement of bicycling costs

I don't know if they'll do another one, but I do know that the link to the goDCgo page on the Commuter Benefits Law is broken.

Senate Tax Plan would repeal the bicycle commuter benefit

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has moved from the House to the Senate, and so last week Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) released the “Chairman’s Mark” to the Senate’s version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

This much-anticipated amendment includes a number of important changes to the tax plan, including fitting the package within the constraints imposed by the Senate’s so-called “Byrd Rule,” which places limits on what can be adopted under the reconciliation process.

One part of this amendment is to repeal the federal bicycle commuter benefit. The quick and dirty history of this is that Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) had long advocated for a bicycle commuter benefit to more fairly treat cyclists considering the parking and transit benefits other workers get. In a cruel twist, the idea, after being rejected numerous times, was watered down and added to the ??? bill in an effort to get Blumenauer's vote (it didn't). So it went into law in 2009. As written, it allows an employee to exclude up to $20 per month in qualified bicycle commuting reimbursements. This has to be a benefit explicitly for bike commuting, and employees can't set their own money aside pre-tax. Nor can they combine it with the transit or parking benefit. So, I suspect it has few takers (Full disclosure: I'm one). 

Blumenauer has advocated for making the benefit better, like allowing you to use it for bike share, increasing it, allowing commuters to put in their own money pre-tax and/or allowing commuters to get it in combination with another benefit (just like they can get both parking and transit if they want); but none of that has gotten anywhere.

No one, as far as I know, has done a study of how much it costs or what the effect of it has been. It was originally expected to cost $1M a year. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that it costs no more than $5M a year, which (by my math) would mean that ~63,000 people are getting the full $240 benefit (and that they would have been paid that money even without the carve out - a dubious claim).

I can't easily assert that it induces more people to bike commute (though that's how both parties normally talk about taxes, that they effect behavior). And I have no idea what it really costs. So without knowing either the costs or the benefits, it's impossible to say if it's worth it. Perhaps we should figure some of those things out before we call it a failure and quit.

Transportation Equity Act would make transportation fairer but more importantly, smarter

Earlier this month Councilmembers Allen, Cheh, and Nadeau introduced a bill that would, in effect, pay a lot of DC workers to bike or walk to work. It would make commuter benefits fairer, but more importantly, smarter in that they would reduce pollution and congestion; improve land use and health; and make roads safer. 

The Transportation Benefits Equity Act would require employers who offer parking benefits to employees to give them the option of taking a "cash out" instead or pay a fee. More specifically, they could take an equivalent amount as the transit benefit, the bicycle commuter benefit, cash or one of these benefits and cash. 

For bike commuters it means they could take the first $20 of parking benefit equivalent as the bicycle commuter benefit and the rest as cash. Pedestrians would have to take the whole thing as cash, which is worth a little less because it's all taxable then, but that's because there is no federal pedestrian commuter benefit.

The fee option would allow employers to pay a $100 Clean Air Compliance fee for each employee "offered" the parking benefit instead of offering the cash out. Now I'm not sure about the reason for this part or exactly how it would work. If every employee is offered a parking benefit, then it would seem they would need to pay the fee for each employee, even for those who choose to walk. The math on when that would be cheaper than allowing employees offered parking to opt for cash instead has got too many variables (# of employees offered parking vs. # that take another benefit, cost of parking in the area) for me to immediate see whether a lot of employers would take it or not, so I wonder if Council has any idea. Strategically speaking it might lead more employers to offer no parking benefit - which would have the same effect or better. 

Regardless, the fee would still help cyclists, pedestrians and transit users as it would go to a Transportation Demand Management Fund, which could be used for promoting, improving access to, and educating the public about alternative transportation; reducing SOV trips and developing transportation innovations. Still, I'm left foggy on why this option is included. 

There's also a reporting requirement about the number of employees and what benefits they were offered and utilized. [Which reminds me, does anyone know if the IRS has reported on how many people are utilizing the Bicycle Commuter Benefit and how much it costs? 8 years after passage I'd like to see if it's more or less than was expected.]

As the Post points out the policy has a fairness element

The change, [CM Charles Allen] said, would address a fairness issue for the workers who sometimes turn down a valuable perk because they don’t drive or who are forced to take it because otherwise they can’t get the benefit any other way.

Which is true, but is less important than the fact that it is just smart policy. In fact one could argue that it would be even smarter to offer a LARGER benefit to those who walk or bike than those who drive because of all the negative externalities associated with driving (pollution, congestion, road safety, etc..) and the positive externalities of active transportation (namely, improved public health). Though it might be harder to argue that it is "fair".

A similar idea for federal employees was kicked around in 1993 and WABA argued at the time that this was a smarter policy.

the fundamental goal is to clean the air, and I believe that there is nothing that meets that goal on a per dollar basis better than including bicycles in the subsidy.

The Post also notes that there are good policy reasons for this.  

Advocates for flexible benefits cite research suggesting that traffic congestion is associated with perks, such as free parking, and that financial incentives for non-solo drivers could help cities move toward more diverse commuting.

In the District, experts say a parking cash-out program could be part of the equation to achieve 75 percent of all trips on sustainable transportation, and it would benefit city residents the most because they are more likely to have easy access to other travel options, such as Capital Bikeshare, bus and Metro.

About 40 percent of D.C. residents drive to work, according to data from the District Department of Transportation, while 39 percent take public transit, 15 percent walk and 6 percent bike.

It is unclear how many companies offer free or subsidized parking, but a city survey of 191 employers in 2016 found that 34 percent offer free parking and an additional 18 percent offer a parking subsidy, according to DDOT.

A similar program has worked well in California

A survey of 5,000 commuters and their employers in downtown Los Angeles showed that free parking at work increased the number of cars driven to work by 34 percent, he said.

In California, legislation enacted in 1992 requires that employers with 50 or more employees who offer free parking must also give workers the option to take an equivalent cash allowance instead. But the law did not set any penalties for noncompliance.

The DC bill does propose penalties

Studies of firms in Southern California that offer parking cash-outs found the share of commuters who drove to work alone fell from 76 percent before the cash option to 63 percent afterward,

 According to another study, solo driving to work fell by 17 percent.

Carpooling increased by 64 percent. Transit ridership increased by 50 percent. Walking and bicycling increased by 33 percent. Commuter parking demand fell by 11 percent.

These mode shifts reduced total vehicle miles traveled for commuting by 12 percent, with a range from 5 to 24 percent for the eight firms. To put this reduction into perspective, reducing VMT for commuting by 12 percent is equivalent to removing from the road one of every eight automobiles used for driving to work. In total, cashing out reduced 1.1 million VMT per year.

Cashing out reduced total vehicle emissions for commuting by 12 percent, with a range from 5 to 24 percent for the eight firms. To put this reduction into perspective, reducing vehicle emissions by 12 percent is equivalent to eliminating vehicle emissions for automobile commuting from January 1 to February 13 every year.

average commuting subsidy per employee increased from $72 a month before complying with the cash-out requirement to $74 a month after complying

But DC's law will be more expansive that CA's

Analysts noted that more outreach was necessary and that the eligibility rules were so narrowly drawn that the law applied to only about 3% of the 11 million free parking spaces provided by employers statewide.

I hope that DC's law will apply to the DC government too. I've been hounding them about not offering the Bicycle Commuter Benefit for years. On the BAC's legislative committee, we made a list of every bill we could think of that would improve cycling, and them we ranked them by political possibility. This one came up very near the bottom, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see this get proposed. 

Other than my questions about the purpose of the Clean Air Compliance fee, my other thought is that DC could make this even better by making the cash portion of this (paid to cyclists and pedestrians) tax deductible on DC taxes. This would do no good for MD or VA commuters, nor would it completely balance out the advantage drivers and transit riders get because their benefit is completely untaxable, but it would make the law closer to "fair" (at a cost to DC).

I'm also not sure if this would apply to the federal government, as sometimes it seems that these regulations and such do not, it would ironic if not, since they were going to go it alone ~25 years ago. 

Anyway, this is a big deal for DC and it comes after a year that, from a bike legislation perspective, was the most successful in decades, so it would be great to see it pass. 

New bills would allow federal workers to be reimbursed for bike share use

Two recent bills have been introduced that would make use of bikeshare easier and cheaper for federal employees.

First of all, and most important to the DC area, is a bi-partisan bill that will allow DC-area federal employees who receive transit benefits to apply those benefits to bike-sharing (and ride-sharing, but who cares about that).

.@bikeshare IS included in bipartisan bill dropping this morning re: transit benefit during #SafeTrack. #bikedc pic.twitter.com/S7O3DMubsu

— Martin Di Caro (@MartinDiCaro) July 8, 2016

News release now out. pic.twitter.com/dE20jeFBkq

— Martin Di Caro (@MartinDiCaro) July 8, 2016

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) have introduced that bill. I don't the name of it or anything else, but Martin Di. Caro is all over it.

The other, known as the Government Travel Modernization Act, would allow federal employees to be reimbursed when they use ride and bike sharing services when traveling for government business. The bill is being introduced by Congressmen Will Hurd (R-TX) and Seth Moulton (D-MA).

The lawmakers say it would give federal workers greater flexibility by being able to summon a ride via a smartphone app, and that the legislation would also save taxpayers money and bring government travel into the 21st century to allow for reimbursement of the other services rather than just traditional ones, such as taxi cabs.

Commuter Parity Act of 2015, a partial fix to issues with the commuter benefits

Once again a bipartisan group of Congress members have introduced a bill to address some of the unfairness and, more importantly, poor policy implications of the current federal commuter benefit program. Namely:

• Cyclists can only exclude $20 a month, but transit users and drivers can exclude $130 and $250 respectively
• You can combine the transit and parking benefits, but you can't take advantage of both the transit/parking benefit and the bicycle benefit in the same month.
• Unlike transit benefits, an employee using the bicycle benefit cannot choose to reimburse themselves with pre-tax income, the reimbursement must be paid by the employer.
• You  can not use the bicycle benefit to pay for bike sharing.

This law would only fix the last of these, but it would raise the maximum for bike commuting from $20 to $35. Same as the 2013 bill that was introduced by former Congressman Grimm (Rep. King of NY introduced this one) This is not all that bike advocates would want, but it is better than the status quo. None of the Washington area delegation has signed on to this bill, despite the transit increase from $130 to $235 being a huge benefit to DC area commuters, though most did co-sponsor the 2013 one. 

The 2013 bill didn't really get anywhere, I'm not that hopeful that this one will fare any better.