# Employer incentives to ride to work?



## TypeOne (Dec 28, 2001)

Does anyone's employer provide any incentive to ride to work? Bike lockers and showers are great, but does anyone get any financial incentives for commuting by bike?
Most private companies here subsidize bus passes. I have heard of rideshare/carpool programs where companies reimburse mileage for the carpool drivers, and give huge parking discounts at pay lots. Some companies are involved in Commute Reimbursement Program, where you can put aside pre-tax dollars for commute expenses like parking, riding transit or carpooling. (A "Section 132" plan from the 1992 Energy Policy Act, I am told. Maintaining a bicycle is not reimbursable.) There are 4-10 schedules, telecommuting plans, flex schedules and so on to keep cars off the road. Some local businesses got together to put out "travel vouchers," redeemable for coffee and other things, for people who drove less than 4 times per week. The catch was that the commute had to be a certain distance - you had to work inside a certain part of downtown and had to live beyond a 15-mile radius of the workplace - and I wasn't eligible.

Mind you, I will ride no matter what, and I have no right to complain. Heck, I work for local government so I get a free monthly transit pass if I want it. But I pay for a bike locker while some drivers get freebies. Has anyone seen any creative programs to encourage/reward cycling to work?


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## fUnkYb0bg (Apr 21, 2004)

TypeOne said:


> Does anyone's employer provide any incentive to ride to work? Bike lockers and showers are great, but does anyone get any financial incentives for commuting by bike?
> Most private companies here subsidize bus passes. I have heard of rideshare/carpool programs where companies reimburse mileage for the carpool drivers, and give huge parking discounts at pay lots. Some companies are involved in Commute Reimbursement Program, where you can put aside pre-tax dollars for commute expenses like parking, riding transit or carpooling. (A "Section 132" plan from the 1992 Energy Policy Act, I am told. Maintaining a bicycle is not reimbursable.) There are 4-10 schedules, telecommuting plans, flex schedules and so on to keep cars off the road. Some local businesses got together to put out "travel vouchers," redeemable for coffee and other things, for people who drove less than 4 times per week. The catch was that the commute had to be a certain distance - you had to work inside a certain part of downtown and had to live beyond a 15-mile radius of the workplace - and I wasn't eligible.
> 
> Mind you, I will ride no matter what, and I have no right to complain. Heck, I work for local government so I get a free monthly transit pass if I want it. But I pay for a bike locker while some drivers get freebies. Has anyone seen any creative programs to encourage/reward cycling to work?



I for one would like to see suggestions in here. My employer provides shower's but unless you sign up with the gym (for a monthly fee) it's BYOT(owel), which pretty much blows. I find that (because dragging a wet towel around is an inconvenience, and hanging it up to dry in my office seems unprofessional) I tend to find another way to work, and only ride home. If I could convince my employer that there were cheap/free ways to encourage alternatives to driving I think it would be great. 

(So far suggesting they provide a 'showers only' gym membership or allow the towels to be used by persons who aren't gym members has not been successful.)

-Jason


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## arctic hawk (May 17, 2003)

TypeOne said:


> Mind you, I will ride no matter what, and I have no right to complain. Heck, I work for local government so I get a free monthly transit pass if I want it. But I pay for a bike locker while some drivers get freebies. Has anyone seen any creative programs to encourage/reward cycling to work?


I am just happy that my employer (since he started riding) will allow me to leave my bike in an unused protion of the office. 
A few years back, when I started to ride to work, they asked me to lock my bike outside, of which, the bike or parts of it would not be there when I finish work in the evenings, so that left me rather unhappy. I then started to leave it in the factory & relocating it every other day to different parts so that the managers didn't see it.


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## Steve-O (Jan 28, 2004)

*I feel lucky...*

I simply feel lucky that I have a locker room (no showers) and a place to park my bike inside when I get to work. 

I hate to say it but most companies that I have worked for are more interested in the bottom line then providing incentives to keep their employees happy. I changed jobs 4 years ago from a sales job (travel 3-4 nights/week) to a marketing job (home every night) partially for the opportunity to be closer to my wife/kid, ride my bike to work, and to avoid wearing a tie. My pay was basically the same but my quality of life improved.

Now I'm looking for a job (while currently employeed) as my company is going down the tubes (mgt. looked too much at the bottom line and not enough at the marketplace). Finding a job with a company that is bike friendly is a big priority. Finding a job with a company that is bike friendly and the job pays well is the ultimate goal!


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## Mapei (Feb 3, 2004)

My employer, a major Hollywood film studio which must remain nameless, offers a small stipend for those people who can document alternative transport to work. I don't take advantage of it, though. Maybe I should. I commute one or two days a week, but only during daylight savings time so I won't have to ride in the dark. 

Anyway, for many years my office was actually an old motel room, so I had a private shower. Before that, I had a 30's era actor's dressing room, again with private shower. For the past three years or so, my office has been in a modern building - which means no real place to clean up. By the same token, though, the climate control in the building is so "controlled," my sweatiness tends to dry up in twenty minutes or so. Since I have a private office, and my job is one that seldom puts me in proximity with anybody that matters, I really don't need to clean myself up after my commutes or lunchtime rides, anyway. My bike, meantime, stays comfortably secure in my office.


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## moschika (Feb 1, 2004)

*not employer but city*

my town/city provides a movie pass to the independent movie theater to anyone who either bikes, walks or carpools to work during the month. you get your pass at the end of the month when you submit a postcard showing what you did. total honor system. very cool.

it's open to anyone who's employer is in town, but has nothing to do with the employer. it's pretty nice because it's not too often that mainstream movies are things i want to see.

it's a city sponsered program and funded by the clean air act or some such thing. they've been doing this for some time. i've only started participating for about a year when i first heard of it.


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## pawistik (Feb 16, 2003)

My new employer (a small biotech company) has a "Health & Professional Development Spending Account" that amounts to about a grand per year. It's meant to pay for health club memberships as well as courses and such I wish to take. I used it to pay for my cycling club membership and canoe club membership, which I successfully argued were my equivalent to a gym membership (although they cost far less). I've broached the idea of using the fund to pay for bike parts and they were at least open to the suggestion. 

Regarding showers etc., we work within a larger research facility which has a (free) gym, showers & lockers so I can easily clean myself up & store my gear. My only problem is that there are 2 bike racks - one located in a mudhole and another way out in the open. I've been meaning to ask the powers that be if I can move them both over to near the front doors, on the pavement where they will sit in front of office windows, at least offering a modicum of security. With the racks on the pavement I'll be tracking less mud into their shiny new building when it rains. 

Cheers


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## mrrun2fast (Apr 14, 2003)

My employer does not really provide any financial incentive to commute to work by bike. But my employer pays 95% of the gym costs. I use the shower in the gym everytime I commute to work. I'm also able to store by bike in the kitchen, rather than leaving it outside. I wish they would give me the money they are paying for my monthly parking spot. I commute to work 4 days out of the week, so I only use the parking spot once or twice a week.


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## TypeOne (Dec 28, 2001)

*No carrots, just a stick (long article)*

According to this article in the Seattle Times, drivers in the Seattle area don't respond as well to carpool/transit incentives as well as they do to a parking fee. Makes sense to me - the marketplace works for most commuters. Suits me just fine. I don't need any bonus for cycling to work, just charge the folks who drive solo!

Getting commuters out of their cars: Where's the payoff? 

By Eric Pryne 
Seattle Times staff reporter 

For years, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center had been offering all kinds of carrots to its employees to persuade them to stop driving alone to work: subsidized bus and van-pool passes. A free taxi ride home in case of emergency. Preferred parking for car pools. 

Then, in 2000, the Northgate-area hospital added a stick. It began charging day-shift solo drivers $30 a month to park on campus. 

Drive-alone commuting dropped 13 percent. 

To avoid the new fee, security officer Fausto Espinoza started car pooling to work. "Thirty dollars, that's half of the gas bill or half of the electric bill at home," he says. 

Larger employers such as Northwest Hospital have been waging war against the "single-occupant vehicle" for more than a decade. It's the law: The state Commute Reduction Act of 1991 requires employers of more than 100 day-shift workers to establish programs to get commuters out of their cars. 

To help persuade them, government transit planners have worked with companies to develop all sorts of promotions and subsidies. 

Nothing works better than the stick, the planners agree. Putting a price on parking gets results because it embraces a fundamental economic principle: When something costs more, people tend to do it less. 

But the most effective tool also is the least popular. In King County, according to the state Department of Transportation's Commute Trip Reduction Office, employees pay to park at fewer than one-third of all work sites covered by the law. 

Their number may even have declined recently, in part because of the region's soft economy. 

Most employers who do charge are in central Seattle, the University District or downtown Bellevue. Farther out in suburbia, where most of the region's job growth of the past few decades has come, free parking remains the norm. 

Suburban employers are reluctant to charge because they fear it could damage employee recruitment, retention and morale, says David Stallings, a King County Metro market-development planner. "Free parking is something they feel they need to provide to remain competitive," he says. 


There's no such thing as free parking, transportation analysts point out. Building it can cost anywhere from $1,500 per stall for a suburban surface lot to $22,000 per stall for a downtown underground garage, according to the Victoria Transport Policy. 


Many offer a carrot but no stick. If Costco started charging workers to park at its Issaquah headquarters, "I think we'd get a negative reaction from our employees, and I think I would understand why," says CEO Jim Sinegal. 

No one wants to pay for something that's always been free. "All of us hate paying for parking," confesses Shawn Rossiter, a car pooler who oversees Northwest Hospital's parking program and supports its goals. "We'd all rather have that $30 a month to buy a pizza." 

The hospital started charging because pressures from the marketplace and government trumped employee objections. Over time, some experts predict, those forces will persuade many more employers to follow Northwest's lead. 


"Parking is not free — even if it's free," says Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington. 

Building it can cost anywhere from $1,500 per stall for a suburban surface lot to $22,000 per stall for a downtown underground garage, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute — and that doesn't include land costs. Annual operating and maintenance expenses can run an additional $100 to $400 per stall. 

Who pays for "free" parking? Indirectly, everyone does, says Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban-planning professor who has studied parking for a quarter-century. 

Companies recoup their parking costs by charging customers higher prices and paying workers lower wages, he says: "Only in our role as motorists do we not pay for parking." 

But those costs are hidden. For most motorists, free parking — or the perception of it — provides a powerful incentive to drive. 

Downtown Seattle has the region's best transit service and highest parking costs. Even so, a 2001 King County Metro survey found 44 percent of downtown workers commuted solo. 

Three-quarters of them enjoyed free or reduced-price parking at work. 

Charging for parking can be a powerful incentive to find an alternative. In downtown Bellevue, 73 percent of the employees of firms that provide free parking drive alone to work, according to the state Commute Trip Reduction Office. 

For firms that don't offer free parking, that figure is just 47 percent. 

Some employers have achieved dramatic reductions in solo commuting by coupling changes in parking policy with improved incentives to stop driving. The engineering firm CH2M Hill eliminated free parking and began subsidizing transit when it moved to a downtown Bellevue office tower in the late 1980s. 

The share of workers driving solo declined from 89 percent to 65 percent in 1990. Today it's just 38 percent. 

The University of Washington began jacking up parking prices in the early 1990s, using the proceeds to subsidize transit, car pools and other options. The number of students, faculty and staff who drive alone to campus has slid from one-third to less than one-quarter. 

Without the program, the university estimates, it would have had to spend up to $100 million for more parking. 

But employers such as the UW and CH2M Hill remain the exceptions. Planners say the number of employers who charge for parking hasn't increased in recent years. 

With office vacancy rates high, some building managers are dropping or reducing parking charges to lure or keep tenants. King County Metro says the share of downtown Seattle workers who enjoyed free parking at work actually increased between 2001 and 2003. Some suburban employers who once charged for parking have stopped. 

In much of the region, though, pay parking was a tough sell even before the economy soured. 

About 80,000 people work in Redmond, more than twice as many as in 1990. Nearly two-thirds of them are employed by companies that belong to the Greater Redmond Transportation Management Association, an organization that works with employers to get commuters out of their cars. 

Some of those firms have award-winning commute-trip-reduction programs. Not one charges employees for parking. 

If they did, drive-alone commuting almost certainly would drop, says John Resha, the association's executive director. But, "to be first, you've got to have a real good reason," he adds. "In the suburban market, you're in a whole different situation." 

People work farther apart in suburbia, usually in widely separated, low-rise buildings. That means transit service often is spotty and finding a car-pool partner more challenging. Employers are more reluctant to take away free parking and risk employees' wrath if alternatives to driving don't work well, says the UW's Hallenbeck. 

What's more, he adds, many suburban workers could simply park on the street. 

To prevent spillover into neighborhoods, many cities and counties required developers to provide more parking stalls than employees and customers needed under ordinary circumstances. So on-site parking is usually abundant. 

For many suburban employees, free parking is a benefit "not unlike a health or retirement plan," the state Commute Trip Reduction Office said in a 1999 report. 

Employers tinker with it at their own risk. 

After the Commute Trip Reduction law passed in 1991, Olin Aerospace of Redmond — now Aerojet — formed an in-house committee to figure out how to comply. 

Its options were few. Management told committee members they couldn't propose anything to get commuters out of their cars that would cost the company money or alter the workweek. So, on the committee's recommendation, Olin imposed a $5 monthly parking charge in 1994. Within a year, drive-alone commuting had dropped from 90 percent of the work force to 67 percent, according to a 1995 King County Metro report. 

Within another year, the fee was gone. 

Cindi Gyselinck, Olin's employee-transportation coordinator at the time, says many workers were so upset by the parking charge that they refused to fill out the paperwork to deduct the $5 from their paychecks. 

"You're not going to fire somebody over five dollars," Gyselinck says. Olin repealed the charge and reimbursed its employees. 

Many workers reverted to driving alone. 

Supply and demand 


Northwest Hospital's North Seattle campus is more suburban than inner-city. It's no transit hub: Just one bus route serves the campus. Before 2000, parking had been free for 40 years. 

The city provided the hospital with a push to start charging. It required Northwest to switch to pay parking before it could build a new garage. 

But Rossiter, the program supervisor, says the decision to end free parking was mostly a question of supply and demand. 

When parking was free, patients and visitors often had trouble finding a space. "We had sick people driving around and around, looking for a place to park," Rossiter says. "It was a nightmare." 

Charging was a way to manage demand. Everyone but employees who car pool pays now: visitors and patients by the hour, workers by the month. 

The $30 monthly fee wasn't greeted warmly. "It got to the point where it was almost tears," says Rossiter. "People asked us, 'Why am I paying for the same piece of asphalt where I've been parking free forever?' " 

Many workers still avoid the charge by parking on neighborhood streets. That should become less convenient in a couple of years, when the city plans to limit on-street parking to two hours. 

The parking fee is no more popular now than it was in 2000, Rossiter says. But Fausto Espinoza, the car-pooling security officer, says he has come to accept it. His commute from Everett takes less time in the HOV lane, he says. He wouldn't go back to driving alone even if the charge was repealed. 

The same market and regulatory forces that pushed Northwest Hospital toward pay parking are starting to play out elsewhere in the region and the nation. 

By 2020, according to one leading economic forecaster, King, Snohomish and Pierce counties will have to find room for 470,000 more jobs, 30 percent more than today. If the state Growth Management Act holds, that growth will be up, not out. The law directs development into already-urbanized areas to prevent sprawl. 

That means available land will get more expensive. Using it to build pricey parking lots or garages for everyone who wants to drive — but not pay — will become more difficult to justify, says Resha, the Redmond commute-trip-reduction official. 

If free parking somehow is provided for everyone, traffic will just get worse, says Rick Williams, a Portland transportation consultant and former parking-company executive. 

That, in turn, will discourage new business, he contends — another reason for employers to stop subsidizing parking and start subsidizing alternatives. 

Some Puget Sound cities already have adopted limits on how much parking developers can provide. One reason: environmental concerns about the impact of runoff from impervious surfaces on streams and salmon. 

At some point, Resha says, even in suburbia, demand for parking will exceed supply. "That's when you let the market start to determine the value of it," he says. 

In five or 10 years, Resha predicts, even in Redmond, people will be paying to park


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## arctic hawk (May 17, 2003)

TypeOne said:


> According to this article in the Seattle Times, drivers in the Seattle area don't respond as well to carpool/transit incentives as well as they do to a parking fee. Makes sense to me - the marketplace works for most commuters. Suits me just fine. I don't need any bonus for cycling to work, just charge the folks who drive solo!


Nice article. It doesn't address situations like transit availability close to home or to work, distance from home to work to make it feasible, etc. But if you work downtown, where it tends to be a transit hub for office workers, shoppers, & tourists, riding is not such a bad idea assuming again, you can safely park your bike somewhere.
Here's a good reason to bike to work in Montreal, if you can, cost of 1 gallon of gas is Cdn$3.76 or US$2.74 for regular & US$3.03 for super as of this morning. We're being gouged at the pumps!


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## GilbeyAllen (Mar 31, 2004)

I heard that Woodside (Oil & Gas major in Australia) used to provide bikes to employees on the condition that they road a certain number of hours per week (not sure how they measured it).

New HQ they have built has more bike parking spaces than car spaces !!

The cynic in me would say its the least they can do for creating part of the pollution problem


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## harveyr (Jun 25, 2004)

REI is great. We have a shower and towel service, a small room with bike hangers and lockers (in addition to the regular employee lockers), a punch-card which turns into a 50% off coupon after 20 rides (or other non-car journeys) to work, and 50% mass transit reimbursement.


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## Chef Tony (Mar 2, 2004)

*I get paid to ride to work.*

Here we either get a paid spot in the parking garage or a "Public Transit reimbursement" of a flat $100 a month. When I was taking BART to work I'd net about $30 on the reimbursement. Now I'm up to about $75 a month!


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## Geo (Jun 14, 2004)

*We do...*

My employer (healthcare) is good for those that want to have fitness as part of there lifestyle. There are several of us that commute to work and we have a rack as well as showers, towels, etc. We are in the process of building a new fitness center for employees that will include spin classes. At the moment we are considering having jersey's made as give aways to folks that will ride their bikes to work. If there is a bike out on the rack that we've not seen before then we will hang a goodie bag on the handle bars that will include company water bottle and other goodies.


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## nate (Jun 20, 2004)

We have a gym for $17/month on one of the lower floors of our building which is easily worth it just for the showers. Unfortunately, I can't bring my bike up to my office and have to lock it in the parking garage. There are bike lockers, but they're always full. The garage is relatively safe because of security guards, despite the fact that their job is really to protect the workers and the buildings, not to watch for theft.

We also can get up to $100 a month for train or bus (which I use when I bike the two and a half miles to the subway rather than the nine miles to work). They pay for parking permits, too, but only after the first $50. It's a much better deal to use public transportation or bike.

So there is nothing specifically for bikers, but things are set up well enough that a decent number of people bike and a much larger number take the bus, subway, or commuter trains, which all stop at a station about 150m from my building.


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## fUnkYb0bg (Apr 21, 2004)

*$17 Is highway robbery.*

I have the option of paying $20/month for having the gym wash my towels. Personally I consider this to be offensive. I think it should cost me less monthly to wash their towels 3 days a week than it should be to use their gym and trainer time at work. They disagree, so I ride home, not to, work.

I'm only a little stingy, and would happily pay $3-$5 as a towel fee. Paying an extra $20/month for the privlege of having access to their treadmills and weight machines. 

So, I ride home mostly, when the weather is agreeable and I can use my own towel without it costing $20/month.


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## nate (Jun 20, 2004)

Well $17/month is a full gym membership. I also lift weights, etc, but was just saying I would consider it worth the price just for the use of the locker room and showers. Most gym memberships in my area are easily two or three times that per month.


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