Last November, we posted an action alert on the potential for millions of Americans to see the cost of their commute suddenly rise. Congress wisely chose to extend to $230 per month tax benefit for transit as part of the 2010 package extending the Bush tax cuts, continuing transit parity with the $230 deduction available for parking. Before that parity was put in place, the federal government was effectively subsidizing employees who drive alone to work — picking winners and losers rather than leveling the playing field for all travel options.

The clock is now ticking once again, and absent Congressional action, the $230 per month benefit will revert back to $120 per month on December 31. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) have introduced legislation to make the benefit permanent.

Tell your member of Congress that you support parity for all travel modes. Commuter Benefits Work For Us, an advocacy coalition supporting the Schumer-McGovern legislation, makes it easy for you to let your representatives know where you stand.

It’s a matter of fairness — and Congress needs to move.

This is terrific news and means that transit users won’t see their benefits cut in half come January 1st.

This benefit for transit commuters, which was raised and equalized with the existing parking benefit at $230 in the 2009 stimulus bill, was due to expire at the end of the year and go back to the old $120 amount— meaning the amount of money transit users can get taken out of their paycheck tax free each month for their commute would be cut in half. Meanwhile, those who choose or need to drive and park would continue getting the $230 benefit each month.

We didn’t think that was fair and thousands of you didn’t think so either. Perhaps you signed the Commuter Nation petition or sent an email or made a phone call to Congress. They got the message and a handful of leaders in the Senate and House worked to get that provision into the tax bill.

For occasional commuters, $120 might be enough, but for those that take and depend on transit every day and spend more than $120 each month — especially those that use more expensive commuter rail or heavy rail systems — they would have had to pay taxes on more of their income each month, putting a dent in the wallet at the time when unemployment is high and money is tight for most Americans.

Estimates varied by agency, but here in Washington, D.C., WMATA said about 285,000 of their users took advantage of the federal program to get part of their paycheck tax-free, and about 90,000 customers needed more than the old $120 amount. And about half the riders of MARC, Maryland’s commuter rail service, use the full $230 or more.

To spell out the financial difference, without the extension commuters who spend $230 each month, $1,320 more of their pay would be taxable each year — costing them several hundred dollars in taxes each year.

Take a minute and call your Senators and Representative and thank them for including this in the bill. We all benefit when more people use public transportation and it’s only fair that transit commuters and drivers have access to the same tax benefits. Tell them why transit matters and why we need to help keep more money in our pockets — no matter how we choose to get to work.

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your Senators or Representative. You can deliver a quick thanks and a message to the person who answers the phone.

If you take transit to get to work each day, come January you could be paying more out of your own pocket when the tax deduction for transit is cut in half.

But drivers will keep enjoying the same great parking benefit – nearly double what transit commuters will be eligible to receive. We don’t think that’s fair, and Congress needs to hear about it.

Sign this petition from our friends at Commuter Nation urging Congress to restore the transit benefit and make it equal to the parking benefit. They’ll deliver all the signatures December 1 – so pass it on quickly!

Come January, if you spend more than $120 a month on your commute in a vanpool, train or bus, the federal government will be sending a message loud and clear: they’d like you to start driving to work, where you can get $230 for parking deducted from your paycheck tax free.

A provision in the stimulus bill increased the transit benefit from $120 to $230, finally putting it on equal footing with the $230 parking benefit and extending this great benefit to everyone, whether they drive or take transit each day. But that provision is about to expire unless Congress votes to extend it during their December session.

Transportation is the second largest household expense for many households. The millions of Americans who depend on transit to get to work each day shouldn’t have to pay more to do something that also saves us energy, reduces congestion and emissions, and uses less oil.

Americans need low-cost transportation options. Tell Congress to keep things fair by extending the transit benefit and keeping it equal with the parking benefit.

The federal government talks a good game about encouraging Americans to carpool or take public transportation to save energy and cut emissions, but they need to put their money where their mouth is. Sign our petition today.

(Note, this petition is hosted by Commuter Nation. -Ed.)

Washington D.C. took another great stride towards making bicycling easier and more attractive with the grand opening of Union Station’s BikeStation almost two weeks ago. With the opening of the stunning facility at Union Station, Washington’s most visited destination and travel hub can now connect commuters using trains, buses, cars, subway, or bikes.

(As Ray LaHood said, it’ll help address that “last mile” problem of commuting.)

The BikeStation offers a brand new option for commuting.  A train or metro rider can now leave their bike at Union Station without it being stolen, stripped for parts, or damaged by weather.  Thus, any commuter who can get to Union Station can now pick up their own, well-maintained bicycle and use it for commuting around Washington.

In New York City, the DOT found out that a safe and secure place to lock up bikes was the number one obstacle preventing more people from biking to work.

A joint project funded by Federal Highway Administration and District of Columbia transportation dollars, the project was built by the D.C. Department of Transportation. Bikestation, which operates 6 other facilities like this one, and Bike and Roll, which rents bikes and leads bike tours for tourists, share responsibility for operating the station.

It is a first for DC, and a totally unique structure designed by Donald Paine of KGP Design Studio to evoke both a bike wheel and helmet. The glass covered arching spine is a striking contrast to the classical Beaux Arts style of Union Station behind it.

The cost per year is $96 as an intro rate, a sum easily covered by the Bicycle Commuter Benefit (available from participating employers).  According to Andrea White-Kjoss of BikeStation, they had already sold 40 annual memberships before the station opened. In the days since it opened, the station has already sold 30 annual memberships and Bike and Roll has been renting as many as 20 bicycles a day. Both figures far exceeded initial estimates.

Combined with the existing SmartBike bike sharing system, BikeStation effectively extends the radius in the region from which a citizen can commute within the region without needing to drive. A bike commuter can bike to Union Station, leave their bike, hop on a Metro train or a commuter train, and head out for points beyond without having to drive.

It’s all about increasing transportation options, and BikeStation is a great one for the city.

Ensign was wrong in asserting that the United States has the highest life expectancy among developed countries when gun and automobile accidents are ignored. But he was on target when he mentioned America’s auto-dependent ways and how that negatively impacts our health.

Compared to Europe, “we’re just a much more mobile society,” he said. “We drive our cars a lot more, they do public transportation. So you have to compare health care system with health care system.”

While misunderstanding mobility as just traveling a high number of miles, Ensign correctly implies that driving more and walking less contributes to poor health and makes us more prone to death (in a car) than our European neighbors, which the data suggests to be true. The most obese cities in the United States — Miami, Oklahoma City and Ensign’s own constituents in Las Vegas — are known for their auto-oriented sprawl.

A recent study in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health confirms a correlation between the more active walking habits of Europeans and lower obesity rates, backing up American research from earlier this decade by Smart Growth America and others showing that residents of sprawling places are more likely to be obese.

If we want to boost mobility while bringing health costs down, we need our transportation policy to create more travel options for everyone and make it safer and easier to walk and bike.

Mobility isn’t an end of itself, nor is it just about going long distances on a regular basis. Mobility is about access to destinations and opportunity. We’re spending hours in the car not because ordinary Americans think that having high “mobility” is important — we’re doing it out of necessity just to get around our increasingly spread out cities.

No one would argue that our transportation priorities are the driving force — no pun intended — behind lower health outcomes. But there is enough evidence to suggest they should be a serious part of the discussion.

Just to get warmed up, chew on this — from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds. Breathtaking if you ask me.

Over this same period, the average number of passengers in a vehicle crossing any of the East River crossings was 1.20. This means that, lacking the subway, we would need to move 324,000 additional vehicles into the CBD (never mind where they would all park).

Frumin actually takes a shot at what Manhattan might look like if you had wide enough bridges to move all those cars — and more importantly, where to park them. And in a word? Wow.

Creative Commons Photo from Michael Frumin

h/t to kottke.org

But what about the looming transportation crisis? Will they be spending much time back at home talking about that?

This summer, as you’re stuck in traffic, squeezing into your carpool, feeling the minutes tick away as you wait for the always-late bus, or pedaling your way through dangerous intersections to put in a hard day’s work, too many legislators are unaware of what commuting each day means for their constituents.

That’s why we’re asking our elected officials to give their drivers a week off, leave their first-class tickets at home, and join our Take Your Legislator to Work Challenge!

For the Challenge, T4 America and some of our 350+ local partners will be organizing to ask your member of Congress or other prominent state leaders to leave their cars and first class flights at home for a week and ride the same carpools, trains, buses, subways, or bikes their constituents use everyday to get where they need to go. Maybe once they’ve seen what things are like on the ground and how limited your options are, they’ll be ready to talk about a truly reformed transportation bill when they come back to Washington in September.

The T4 America campaign is also going to be asking some notable leaders and individuals here in DC that aren’t going anywhere for the summer to take part in our Challenge. Check back right here on the blog for latest news on legislators that are participating or what you can do to help persuade them to join up, and hopefully, we can get a few of them to write or tweet about their experiences for us.

From the T4 America Youtube Channel.

If you’re not reading Worldchanging on a regular basis, you’re definitely missing one of the most positive, encouraging, and exciting daily blasts of news from the world of sustainability and innovation. Alex Steffen and his team have been tirelessly working to point the way to a brighter future for America and the world that contrasts powerfully to the most dire predictions of energy shortages and global warming if we do nothing.

Sometimes when we’re so focused on innovation, there can be a blind trust in some mystery technology, not yet created, that will solve our energy problems. This is especially apparent with regard to our automotive fleet that will “one day soon” run on banana peels or solar power. Alex and Worldchanging, to their credit, have looked around and seen obvious, ready-to-go solutions to curb our energy thirst and cut emissions, while still getting us where we need to go, outlined in a wonderful essay from a year ago, entitled “My Other Car is a Bright Green City.”

We bring up Worldchanging also to point you to a short piece written by Transportation For America communications director David Goldberg on the connection between the current housing crisis and the old development model based on inexpensive fuel.

An excerpt:

In truth, the phenomenon of sending people ever farther into the countryside to find houses that they (barely) qualified to purchase played no small role in the current global financial crisis. The epicenter of the U.S. foreclosure crisis can be found on the metro fringes. The buyers who stretched and took on variable-rate or interest-only mortgages, along with punishing commutes, to get into houses on the edge found themselves caught in a double bind.

As gas prices and commute costs rose, their “cheap” houses became ever more costly, even as mortgage payments adjusted along with rising interest rates. But when they went to sell, they found the bottom had dropped out of that market, thanks not only to higher gas prices, but also to demographic and cultural changes that were leading more households to look for homes in more convenient locations.

Read the full article at Worldchanging, and bookmark them for return visits. Our thanks to Alex and Worldchanging for the space.