The federal tax code allows employers to provide to employees tax-free transit and vanpool benefits, often referred to as “commuter benefits.” By lowering the cost of riding on transit and in vanpools for employees, commuter benefits should increase transit and vanpool ridership and reduce personal vehicle use. Commuter benefits programs are also believed to be advantageous for transit agencies because they increase ridership and/or revenues while potentially lowering costs associated with cash handling and individual fare transactions. Reduced vehicle use for commuting can result in parking cost savings for employers and should, in turn, yield social benefits in terms of reduced traffic, improved air quality, reduced fuel consumption, and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. These effects, however, have not often been quantified, and there is a need for information to better assess the effectiveness of commuter benefits programs. Although the topic of this research study is commuter benefits, broadly defined, data to assess the impacts of vanpool benefits or other financial benefit programs were limited, and, consequently, the focus of this report is on transit benefits programs. This report is designed to help employers, transit agencies, and other organizations that promote transit benefits, and policy makers better understand the impacts of a transit benefits program and how to quantify these impacts for their own programs. The report has three chapters: • Chapter 1 provides an overview of commuter benefits and a discussion of the study objective and the organization of the report. • Chapter 2 provides guidance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of a transit benefits program, providing information on why program evaluation is important, how a program can be designed and implemented to more effectively meet goals and objectives, and how to conduct surveys as part of a program evaluation. Although this chapter focuses on transit benefits, many of the concepts regarding program evaluation are applicable to all commuter benefits programs. • Chapter 3, based on research from metropolitan areas across the United States, examines the effects of transit benefits programs on employee travel behavior and on transit agency ridership, revenues, and costs. Chapter 3 is designed to improve the public’s understanding of how effective these programs are and under what circumstances they tend to be most effective. Although the focus of this chapter is on transit benefits programs and their impacts on transit ridership, the limited data on vanpool benefits and other financial benefits are discussed briefly. (Author/publisher)
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