自行车行业同样获得救助

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Well, it seems as though everyone wants a piece of the bailout bill and as we’ve learnt today GM, Chrysler are getting theirs and it turns out people who ride their bikes to work [are] also entitled to bailout money. Alison Kosik, as our Energy Fix from New York, helps us understand this one, bicyclers getting some of the bailout money.

Exactly T J, you know I bet you didn’t know this but buried within the bailout legislation is a $20-a-month benefit for anyone who bikes to work on a regular basis. Cyclists can use the money for things like tires, tune-ups and bicycle parking, but there are a couple of problems with this.

First, very few companies are ready to implement this benefit, even though it’s available on January 1st. Employers aren’t sure exactly how to structure the program they are wondering, you know is it a straight reimbursement or a pretax deduction from your pay check? Many are waiting for guidance from the IRS before making the benefit available to employees.

Second, there is a big potential downside for commuters themselves. If you use the bike benefit, you can’t get any other transit benefit your company may offer, like money for your monthly bus or train pass. And that’s often worth a lot more than $ 20 a month, so people who bike to the bus or train station probably won’t sign up, T J.

Well, how many people actually do ride their bikes to work, do we know how many people might be using this, might be benefiting from it?

Well, TJ you know we don’t have any hard numbers, but we do know it became a lot more popular last summer, you remember when gas prices were soaring, cities saw huge jumps in the number of people bringing bikes onto buses, places like Denver, Houston and Fairfax County Virginia, reported increases of 75-100 percent. But now that the price of gas has dropped to an average of $1.67 a gallon, it’s hard to say whether the trend will keep up, especially with winter here. But the League of American Bicyclists think it will, as they told us, when one just starts cycling, it really is hard to go back to being stuck in traffic. And for more on Energy Fix, just check out cnnmoney.com. TJ, back to you.

All right there, Alison Kosik with the Energy Fix today, thank you so much.

IRS  abbr. Internal Revenue Service 美国国税局