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Bailout is for bikers too

Bike commuters are entitled to a $20-a-month tax break, as part of the $700B bailout.

Well, it seems that still everyone wants a piece of bailout bill and as we learnt today GM and Chrysler are getting theirs and it turns out people who ride their bikes to work also entitle 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 better you didn’t know this buried with in 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 on 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 are unsure 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 abide 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 it, 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 than last summer, you remember when gas prices were soaring, cities saw huge jumps and a 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 a dollar 67 a gallon, it’s hard to say whether the trend will keep up, especially with winter here. But the League of American Bicyclist think it will, as they told us, one just start cycling is really hard to go back to been stuck in traffic. And for more on Energy Fix, check out cnnmoney.com. TJ, back to you.

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

文本参考中文翻译

自行车使用者每月减少20美元的税款，作为7千亿美元救援计划的一部分。

自从昨天通用汽车和克莱斯特获得了政府的救援贷款之后，似乎所有的人都想得到救援资金的一部分。现在，骑自行车的人都有权使用救援资金。来自纽约的Alison Kosik让我们了解到，自行车使用者也得到部分救援资金。

确实是，你知道，我敢打赌你不知道，每天骑自行车去上班的人也每月减免20美元的税款，这也包括在7千亿美元救援计划之内。骑自行车的人可以用这些钱来买车胎，车铃等，但是这也存在一些问题。

首先，基本上很少有公司准备实施这项福利，虽然该计划从明年1月1日开始生效。雇主们不确定怎样安排这个计划。你知道，到底是直接支付给员工20美元，还是在税前工资里面减掉20美元呢？在这项福利真正落实到员工身上之前，企业还有待国税局的指引。

第二，这对骑自行车者也有潜在的危害。如果你使用了这项福利，那么你就得不到公司提供的其他交通补贴，比如每月公交或火车接送。那些费用通常也超过每月20美元。所以那些使用公交或火车的人可能不会签名。

那么，到底多少人确实是骑自行车去上班的呢，我们能否得知多少人会使用这项福利，多少人能从这个政策中受益呢？

你知道，我们没有准确的数字，但是我们知道，现在骑自行车的人比去年夏天大大增多，那时汽油价格飙升，城市里涌现出许多人将自行车带到公交车上，休斯顿和佛吉尼亚的自行车增长了75%-100%。但是，现在汽油价格下降到了67美元每加仑，很难说这种趋势会不会继续下去，尤其是现在是冬天。但是美国自行车联盟认为会的，就像他们说的，一旦开始骑自行车，很难回到以前拥挤的交通。要了解更多信息，请登录cnnmoney.com.