Episode 50 Transcript: Rethinking Commutes: Getting E-Bikes from Work
The complete transcript for episode 50.
Molly Wood:
Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.
Molly Wood:
This week … you thought I forgot about National Bike Month, didn’t you …
Molly Wood:
Well … I kind of did … but it’s NOT TOO LATE … thank goodness … so this week we’re going to talk about bikes and micro-mobility in general … and how to help get more people commuting in something OTHER than cars …
Molly Wood:
Reminder that transportation is the single biggest source of emissions in the US … and personal cars and light trucks represent more than half of the overall load … and switching those cars to electric IS a big part of the solution … but everybody in the transportation pool, folks …
Molly Wood:
we need it all.
Molly Wood:
This week’s entrepreneur … Chinmay Malaviya … spent his early career trying to get people to use scooters … and then realized that the way to encourage cleaner commutes … is to start … at work.
Chinmay Malaviya:
My name is Chinmay Malaviya. I'm the co-founder and CEO of RidePanda. And at RidePanda, our vision is to be the sustainable mobility benefits platform. And what we do today is focus on bikes and scooters, electric, non-electric, and offer them to employers to give them to their employees as part of their commuter or sustainability benefits.
Molly Wood:
Great. OK, so tell me, let's start with how you got the idea for this and how you decided to target companies with this solution.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah. So, I worked at Lime, one of the leading scooter-sharing companies. My co-founder worked at Bird before that, he worked at Scoot. So we are very familiar with the micro-mobility world. We are, of course, proud and grateful for what these companies have done, especially in the US in terms of introducing millions of people to these new ways of moving in cities, which is not a car, right? You know, you're looking at the power of electric scooters and e-bikes and so on and so forth.
So that is definitely exciting. And if you just even step back, right, if you look at the US, transportation is the number one cause of emissions. Half of that comes from passenger cars. 60% of these car trips are actually zero to five miles. When you double-click in places like San Francisco or New York, 80% of these car trips are actually zero to three miles. Right. And then you look at that problem and then you look at the demand and the growth these companies have seen. Fantastic.
Amazing. Right. So, I think that really struck us that, hey, there's a problem and there's a solution that makes sense. Maybe you're familiar, maybe your listeners are familiar that scooter sharing as a business is hard, right? Bird has gone bankrupt, Super Investor had gone bankrupt and so on and so forth. So our goal at RidePanda was like, hey, there is something here. How do we build a business that continues to drive people to get out of cars and embrace this? And embrace this not just as something I do once in a while, but actually have a long-term relationship with these vehicles while also addressing some of the other pitfalls of the sharing companies. And they're as follows. Number one is choice, right?
If you go in San Francisco or Google e-bikes, there's so many different types and kinds of vehicles out there. Cargo e-bikes, if you want to take kids to school, mountain e-bikes, if you have to go off the trail, you have step-through e-bikes that are preferred by women. Your foldable scooters or foldable e-bikes or pedal bikes you could take on the subway or the BART or the train. And, Limes and Birds are one size fits all. So they don't address the body types and use cases out there given this Cambrian explosion around micro-mobility. That's one thing.
Molly Wood:
Right. Right.
Chinmay Malaviya:
And the other two things being affordability, like Lime is $10 a single trip. Again, if you're a regular user, it's a few hundred dollars a month, not very affordable. And then finally, convenience and reliability. You wake up, you want your ride ready. Whereas you may find a Lime, it may be charged, may not be there, may have the range and so on and so forth. So that is the origination sort of for RidePanda, like how do we take that interest and build a business that connects people to high-quality vetted products and then, you know, all the support and servicing.
Molly Wood:
Wonderful. Right, so to sort of summarize, people want these solutions, right? They do actually want to get out of cars. It's just that so far it's been a little tricky to get them to adopt these habits for all of the reasons you mentioned. Talk to me, though, about, put this real quickly in the kind of impact space. Talk to me about the impact on the climate and why it is actually really important to get people to adopt these solutions as part of our transportation mix.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so as I was saying, Molly earlier, like if you just look at the car trips in the zero to five miles, right? That's almost 10% of the US emissions are all that, that's that, right? That's what we're going after. With a solution that makes sense. It's not an autonomous scooter that we need that will come in 10 years. It's there today. We can put it to use now, right? So I think that's where it comes in.
And even if you look at our data, I think it's very, very promising. Half of our riders are actually new to micro-mobility, new to biking. They're coming to us with corporate subsidies and then embracing our subscription program. On average, our riders would replace 6.5 car trips a week, right? Which is very promising. If you look at the annual basis, you're looking at per individual rider, half a ton of CO2 that we are saving. So I think we are seeing already very promising metrics with this model.
And we are super, super excited to continue that while working with employers. Who have their own obligation around getting people back to work and giving them more flexible options, making more sustainable. There's also stick here where governments want people, employers to reduce single occupancy car trips. So we're working with all of these sort of ethos that employers have while giving something that's state of the art, innovative, fun, exciting, with a very simple, flexible subscription program.
We're not making American consumers commit to a buy for life and that this is it. It's a month-to-month subscription. Try what you want. You can swap out if it's not a right fit for you. We'll help you do safety onboarding. A high touch experience will help you in support, servicing, insurance, all of that. So it's super exciting to see that that is the direction that the company is already showing some of the results.
Molly Wood:
And so fundamentally the product that you offer to companies is we come in, you have stock of bikes and scooters and all these different sort of micro-mobility options that an employee can then lease and you manage that process.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Correct, exactly. And the way we work with, we have a hub model where we run our own brick and mortar stores, which we call Panda Hubs, going with the Panda name. And I think these are different from a bike shop experience. The front of the house is test rides, back is service, and they're very much catered to the novices, right? Like where you can come in, you feel very comfortable, it's approachable, and you can test out different vehicles. We also do work with third-party bike shops as well, where you can choose to pick up their bike there or get service from them. So that's the model that we have sort of worked out.
Molly Wood:
So what was the, describe the, so you had this sort of insight into the barriers to adoption that consumers were already having. What was the insight that made you go, we should go to employers and then tell me about the product that you developed for companies.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think subscriptions models we were always have been thinking about it as a business. We looked at for the delivery use case, we looked at just direct to consumer. But I think it was almost, you know, just to us that we actually learned that Amazon is already offering this as a benefit, right? They're offering, you know, and if you just take it step back, commuter subsidies are not a new thing.
Companies have been offering commuter subsidies around parking, transit, van pools, all of those things, right? So what employers haven't actively been doing is reacting to where the world is today and trying to offer an e-bike or e-scooter or a biking solution as well. And in the case of some of the employers, they were working with individual bike brands and they were struggling with a couple of reasons, right? When you work with an individual bike brand or maybe two, you don't necessarily offer choice to your employees, right? Because there's so many different types and kinds of body types and form factors out there.
You cannot rely on, you know, stock fluctuates when you work with a single manufacturer, right? So they may have stock today. They may not have stock tomorrow. Service levels continue to be, you know, not great when you work with individual bike brands, something I think they're evolving and changing. But today, a lot of emphasis and focus, especially with the direct to consumer brands have been on sales and top line growth and less on support and repairs and warranty and all of those things, which again can is crucial to make sure that there's a long-term relationship here. And then finally data, like I think we talked about sustainability here, but an employer gives a benefit.
They need a lot of data points. They need to know how many, you know, what is my engagement like? What is their adoption like? What is the month to month growth? What is across different offices? How many CO2 savings I've had? How many cartels I've avoided? I have mandates to meet to my governments to report these things. I need to tell this to my sustainability teams. I am a transportation manager. I need to just report to my boss to tell them.
Molly Wood:
So you found out that Amazon already offers this micro-mobility benefit and you thought, okay, we can do this better.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Correct, yes. And I think where we really saw, you know, in the startup terms, product market fit, is that when we turn around and offer the same solution that we've built for Amazon to other employers, they all jumped on it, right? And we've worked with now city governments, we've worked with law firms, we're launching with the hospital, we're also working with some other tech employers. So that's really, you know, that, you know, like really got us excited that this is the business we want to be in.
Molly Wood:
Yep. And then how, okay, so tell me, we'll do like user experience for each part of the business. How does it work for the employee?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yes, for the employee, they get a nice like a curated web experience. They can browse through different vehicle types. They can look at what they want. They can read about them. They can reach out to us.
They can also see their subsidy amount so they can see how much they will have to be paying, how much the employers will subsidize. And then they can choose to just sign up online and then we can deliver it to the campus or they can pick it up at our stores or which many of them do come to our store and do a test ride first. Right, figure out what's really the right fit for them and then sign up after. And if you have that in stock right away, they can pick it up or we'll get to them within two weeks.
Molly Wood:
Okay, so they pick out their bike or their scooter or whatever. What are the options that are available for an employee?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think we want to offer a nice choice. We don't want to also cause decision fatigue. So we offer basically 10 vehicles. Two of them are scooters, right? One is a more lightweight, you know, but also lower range scooter. One is a more heavier, more speed, more range scooter. Then we offer a couple of different just pedal bikes, non-electric or normal road bike. We also offer, we just added Brompton.
So foldable pedal bike as well that folks can choose. And then we offer six different e-bikes. They go all the way from a commuter e-bike, that's easy, battery in the frame, easy to also carry. Then we go into a mountain e-bike, which are very popular, especially in Seattle, where people go on the trails. We also have a step-through bike, which are more popular with women, it's easier to get on and off. Then we also have a cargo e-bike.
So we offer one compact cargo, one large cargo e-bike, and then folks can choose, especially folks who want to take groceries or even they want to take kids to school, they prefer that. So. That is that, you know, and then we work with various different manufacturers across the, you know, the best manufacturers really out there to get their vehicles in our duration. And we're continuing to revise that as we see what's something new out there that could be interesting. We'll keep on adding on to our portfolio.
Molly Wood:
So then, and then the employee pays monthly. It's just like a subscription for as long as they want. Is there a term attached, you know, like a contract attached or they have like a lease, car lease.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, it's very flexible. It's a month to month subscription, right? So you can come in, you're like, you know, I want to try it out and see what happens and see how it sort of fits into my lifestyle. And so we are excited for that. I think the flexibility of things core, especially to get novices to embrace this.
I will also say what is exciting is that we see some very strong retention, right? It's not like people are leaving us after two months or three months or four months. They're actually sticking through it. We have people who are being writing with us over two years. Some of them also have swapped to a different vehicle, which is also exciting, right? But they've continued the relationship with us.
I think which just goes back to why we started the company and the mission, that the long-term behavioral change only happens, but it becomes part of your habit. You use it for commute, but you can also use it for recreation, errands, all of that.
Molly Wood:
And then from the employer perspective, just for people who kind of are not familiar, talk about the incentives for an employer to adopt something like this, whether it's retention or, like you said, some reporting requirements.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things that we meet here. When you look at transportation and commutes post-pandemic, it continues to evolve. What companies have been doing is like, how do I get people back to work in a more flexible manner?
Giving them the agency to come and go as they want to, while also reducing my costs at maybe not running those shuttles at high frequencies anymore because people are different days, different times, and so on and so forth. And then... And sustainability, that's the other big piece we see, right? Which is the stick I mentioned, governments have mandates to reduce single occupancy car trips. There are cleaner mandates for that.
And employers are actively looking at various ways to do that, right? Just to reduce the scope three emissions, but also signal to their employees that they do care about it. And this is a tangible investment they're making around sustainability. So that's definitely is core. The other thing I would say is, I think, especially with folks who manage transportation at these big employers.
Active mode of transportation is also something they're keeping in mind. When you look at biking, it's active, it's good for you to exercise, you can decompress after work, and that's another thing that they're looking at. And it all goes into the bigger umbrella of keeping talent happy, retaining talent, and so on and so forth.
Molly Wood:
What is your sense of who are some of your, can you talk about who your customers are? It sounds like obviously Amazon is one of them.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think we work with the various different tech employers, right? That follow suit as Amazon and others, but we also work with, I think what is exciting is a city government is a client. We work with a law firm. We're launching with a hospital and we're getting interest. There's a retirement home who wants us for their staff, right? There's a hotel chain is looking for it for their own staff. But, you know, it's all promising, you know, results we're seeing.
Molly Wood:
Right.
Chinmay Malaviya:
The other piece I'll also say is if you're also looking to start working with sub government, you know, e-bike rebates are a big thing in the US. 100 plus cities and states are doing it. Primarily rebate dollars were going to purchases, but there's also interest to offer those rebate dollars to fund subscriptions. So that's also another angle we're looking at.
Molly Wood:
Because cost is a bit, I mean, obviously cost is just a really big barrier. I would imagine like there are plenty of people. We'll talk about some of these numbers in a minute, but plenty of people who would love to ride any bike to work, to avoid traffic or for sustainability purposes, but don't have two, three, $5,000 to sink into one.
Chinmay Malaviya:
100%, exactly. And Molly, as you can imagine, for somebody who's curious about it, they're like, well, that's a huge barrier. Like people who are already committed would do it. And I think that's why the power of subscription program, power of putting subsidies that employers already have with their own goals is so interesting and exciting to actually get, to accelerate that adoption that you were working on.
Molly Wood Voice-Over:
Time for a quick break. When we come back, how starting this company during COVID … when not that many people were going to work at ALL … ended up accidentally being … great!
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. I’m talking with Chinmay Malaviya … co-founder and CEO of RidePanda … about how employers can maybe get people to want to come back to work … by offering benefits like … cheap leases on electric bikes and scooters! Also … a crazy tax code discovery that you should call your representative about because wow … back to Chinmay.
Molly Wood:
And then let's talk a little bit more about the return to work idea because I imagine that in the short term, as you were starting this company, that must have been a big barrier. You were rolling out an employee benefit and all of a sudden offices were closing. But talk about kind of folding the story and the narrative into the idea that if you can make it easier and nicer and give this incentive for people to get back to work in a better way, that it kind of feeds that.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think to me, we are a COVID baby, right? So we started in 2020. So we saw the, you know, like suddenly like we were thinking about commute as a use case and then COVID came and then there was no commute. And I think what was, so what was fascinating and interesting and which is a big silver lining that came out of COVID was that bikes became almost a new toilet paper.
That's what CNN called them, right? People were actively looking for single passenger safe ways to get around. That is not an Uber pool. That is not a train. That is not a shuttle. And I think it was exactly the time that e-bikes became more and more prominent. Like if you look at e-bikes, they were not a thing in 10 years ago, right? Like 10 years ago, we used to lead acid batteries for electric bikes, which was just very much not the norm. Just in the past five years, you have seen success of like these big direct to Canumer brands like VanMoof, Rad Power, who suddenly came in.
And all thanks to... Battery prices going down 90%, lines and birds introducing millions of people of the power of these vehicles. And then suddenly just generate that consumer demand. And COVID was in a way good and initially, of course, just shut down all transportation always, but actually a great silver lining because of that. Because it's just like, I want to exercise, I want to do something that's, I'm not away from some people.
So, and that trend has continued. So I think that's, I think now the return to office is always, you can embed that together and say, Hey, this, this is something that's getting more and more popular. And now we can actually also achieve our goals around getting people back to work, but giving something that's flexible, sustainable state of the art, innovative, exciting, and tangible, right? It's not a benefit that you don't see in, you know, you see and feel it, you keep a bike next to you and so on and so forth. So. That also, I think it's pretty exciting and nobody hates biking to be honest, right? Like it's a loved benefit, right? It's like, it's hard to critique that you're going to go against it. So that also helps.
Molly Wood:
Yeah. Okay. And so then for the employer, you manage the whole process, right? I mean, you're buying, is my understanding, buying all of these vehicles, storing them, managing, dealing with the repair, just sort of basically saying, here you go, Amazon or city government. Like just, we have an app for that.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Exactly, as you can imagine, employers want a single one-stop substitution that takes care of everything. And ideally, that's also a nationwide provider that gives parity to all their employees to get the same benefit. They're not in the business of managing 10 different relationships, 10 different vendors, 10 different bike brands, and having each of them has issues. They'd rather work with one partner. And I think with some of our partners, we do weekly, bi-weekly, monthly calls.
Where we're working on our joint goals, on feedback, what we can do better, how can we address some of the challenges. Bike to work month happens to be this month, right? So we're doing a lot of different test ride events at their campuses. And I think that's a partnership. And I think also focus helps, right? We're not doing anything else, but just this. That is also powerful here. Our customer is the employer and the employee. That's all we are doing. And I think that's why even the bike brands, they love us.
They're like, we are this unique complementary sales channel for them that you won't have access to without us. Right. And it's also new customers, which everybody's happy about because also leads to more network effects of just more bikes on the streets leads to more bikers to feel comfortable, safe, embrace that lifestyle. Even within the employers, we see a lot of word of mouth and referrals. I am writing it's I love it. I found it here.
This is the right for me. Why don't you do it too? And so sometimes we even see teams coming after lunch to go test ride on bikes as a way to just hang out and then find the right fit for them. So it's super, super exciting.
Molly Wood:
It's such a like, it must just be such a good, a feel-good business to be in. Because like you said, nobody hates it. You're making people healthy. You're getting them outside. You're getting cars off the road. Like it's delightful.
Chinmay Malaviya:
100%
Chinmay Malaviya:
I know, and Molly, I wanted to, you know, like going back to why we started that I wanted to have a meaningful, impactful business that is also fun and exciting. And I think that's like, these are the ethos that connected well. And it's also, as you said, it's always exciting to see messages for some of our writers who will say, I dissed my car and I'm not only biking anymore and I feel a little healthier or it's fun or look forward to this.
We get all of these anecdotes here and there, which is super fun and exciting, right? I think what meaningful, right? And I think that's what. If you add that to work and then works, of course we have challenges as well, many so, but that keeps us, keeps me and I think definitely the team very motivated.
Molly Wood:
And then you mentioned, so then does every individual company or organization decide how much they're going to subsidize the cost to their employees?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so subsidies vary, right? It could be, you know, so I think that's a function of the employer. And we do see a good, like sort of willingness to do out of pocket as well from the employee. Let's say you want to go to a more expensive bike and they're willing to pay that as well. But yes, like subsidies can vary across.
Molly Wood:
And then how do, what does the, can you kind of average the cost that an employer might pay and then can they roll that in? Can it be like a pre-tax contribution kind of thing? Or like, what are the different mechanisms that employers might set up for that?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so the subsidies can be anywhere from $100 to $200 a month. Now, in terms of the pre-tax, post-tax, an interesting topic. So US currently makes parking and transit pre-tax, but biking is post-tax. So there is a little bit of disconnect. So you can imagine how, in a way, yeah.
Molly Wood:
who do we call about that immediately? That Pete Buttigieg, we have to talk. That's insane.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, exactly. Hopefully he's listening. But there's a bill. The good thing is there's a bill called the Bicycle Commuter Act, right? That seems to have support from both sides. And it's hopefully should be a bigger part of a bigger bill, hopefully not this year, next year. That should change that.
And that should be very powerful to give it parity with parking, right? Like... Which is just a little, you know, like, so I think things are moving in the right direction. There's a bill that's, you know, all of that is happening, but that I think would be, would be a huge unlock for us. So I think that's something, of course we are looking forward to. but what I will also say is employers, I think this is all, I'll give them a lot of credit. They're also not waiting for this. They're like, Hey, I have a subsidy.
I know this is, I allocate typically for pre-tax. I want my people to get bikes. I don't want to wait for this pre-tax. I'll give that option.
Molly Wood:
Right.
Chinmay Malaviya:
And you may forgo the tax savings, but I do get the bigger win. And I think we see that behavior from both employers and employees, which is also great to see.
Molly Wood:
Mm-hmm. And then clearly, it sounds like there's a big, you've given some data, there's a big data component to this, right? How can you use the data both for a company's benefit, but maybe in a larger aggregated way?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think we're seeing a lot of different things. I think there's also, you know, like for the employer, right, to know what's going on, what adoption looks like by different offices, what we also double-click on what types of vehicles people are signing up for as well, right? And what are we missing?
What we need to add on? We get a lot of feedback from our employees too. Like we actually did not offer pedal bikes. We were just an electric mobility company. Folks were like, I just want a pedal bike. I want a foldable bike and things like that. So we kept on adding that as well. And we're excited for the data we're collecting over time. And I think this could also be powerful to even as we scale, share it with some of the government authorities that is look at planning infrastructure on biking or safe, you know, sort of parking and things like that.
So I'm also excited for that as we, as we sort of grow and have that massive amounts of data on where people are commuting, how often they're doing it and what, how can we make that even a safer, easier, frictionless, right? Given there, I think, I don't know if you saw regulation, New York just announced they want to build 500, bike parking cages in the city to meet their mandates on increasing more share that's more sustainable.
We just got an out yesterday. So I think these are things that are happening and we would love to, we do have some conversations with the government authorities already for A, having just them as a client, which will be exciting, but B, also to work with them to some of their bigger employers in that vicinity to also work with us. But there are other these companies we're also excited about to continue to. feedback to the ecosystem to make it easier and frictionless and safer for everybody to embrace this.
Molly Wood:
What this might be extremely hard to quantify, but I think because I live in the Bay Area, the idea of biking to work. I've only ever worked in San Francisco, right, or home. And so what like how do you what percentage of workers? Is able to get to work in this way, like lives within three to five miles. Of work.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think great question, Molly. So I think it really depends, of course, on employer to employer, where you look at it, right? So if you look at typically, I think we see from close to 50% of our big enterprise clients have employees within zero to five miles, right? And if you look at our office in like San Francisco, Seattle, it's like 70, 80%, right? That's the pool we're looking at, right? So, but just the substantial.
Molly Wood:
Hmm. Yeah.
Chinmay Malaviya:
The other thing I will also add on Molly is that sometimes you may, and we see that with our data, right? You may be living 20 miles away from your office, but you could use a portable scooter, a foldable pedal bike to do multi-modal trips, which we already see that we have some employees who will take our scooters to the corporate shuttle bus and then go to work. We have folks in San Francisco take our scooters to BART and then go all the way. So that adds on. But I think.
Molly Wood:
Right.
Chinmay Malaviya:
there is still a substantial amount of commute trips could be replaced with this option.
Molly Wood:
Right. And then what do you find are the most popular? Like it's super interesting that you had to just add pedal bikes, you know, like what do you find? Is there kind of an easy winner?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah, so I think the good thing is I think choice was something that, you know, we, when we started the company, really felt strongly about and we continue to see that in our data. So there's no like one outlier winner. There are of course some favorites. So there are, I think the favorites are as follows, right? So we have a commuter e-bike, like more on the portable side, like classic e-bike, but the battery is one of the more popular ones.
Mountain e-bikes are actually very popular people, even though they're not mountain e-biking, but they love the suspension and the ride. which is interesting and they can also take off the road in certain cases that they also is preferred. Cargo e-bikes are very popular. We have a compact one. They're not the number one, but they come in the top five as well. And then the scooters do very well, right? When you look at smaller, nimbler San Francisco, or even like if you look at New York or Boston, scooters are also pretty popular.
Molly Wood:
Got it. So really it sounds like it's spread. I mean, it sounds like it's people just want options.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like there's, yeah, it's your body type, your height, your weight, how long you want to ride, how often you ride, are you on top of a hill, how much, all of these can vary. What is your storage situation? Are you going to walk up, you know, like help folks understand what that, that I sort of vehicle for will be for them.
Molly Wood:
Yeah, you know what? I forgot to ask you, where did the name come from?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yeah. So, interesting enough, I, this is actually my third Panda adventure. If I start counting my very first job was at the world wildlife fund, which is, I guess where the Panda started. And then I helped build something called food Panda, which is now one of the leading online food delivery platforms in Asia. so, and that journey just has continued.
Molly Wood:
That's amazing. Have you ever gotten to like hold or snuggle a panda in that first job?
Chinmay Malaviya:
I have seen a panda from distance, but I would love to get there.
Molly Wood:
Amazing. Chinmay, it's so simple and so effective and so delightful. I love it. Congratulations.
Chinmay Malaviya:
Thank you, Molly. I mean, I'm glad. Thanks for the kind words of encouragement and then we'll take it.
Molly Wood:
Good. Yes, totally. You're like, I'll take it. Positive vibes only. What?
Chinmay Malaviya:
Yes, I'll take it. We are a panda in the end. So we have to, we have to.
Molly Wood Voice-Over: In case you’re wondering … the Bicycle Commuter Act was proposed in 2021 … after commuter benefits for biking to work were actually suspended in 2017 … as part of the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Before that you could get 20 pre-tax bucks a month for your bike-related expenses. The reasoning seems to have been that the benefit complicated the tax code … was small in overall terms … and not that many people took advantage of it.
I’m just reporting the history folks … don’t at me. Just prove them wrong …
That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening.
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