Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Focusing on the Retention of Carpoolers and Transit Riders

I just returned from annual meeting of the Southeast chapter of Association for Commuter Transportation in Sarasota, FL where I heard several interesting presentations about "new" approaches to reducing vehicle trips and vehicle miles of travel. Rick Steele with NuRide demonstrated their incentive-based approach. NuRide offers commuters the choice of a wide range of rewards provided by local and national businesses to commuters who use travel options other than driving alone and record their trips. An added benefit - the value of these donated rewards are used by some communities as local match for funding purposes.


This apparent win-win focus is on rewarding people to increase "loyalty" and frequency of those commuters who use of options other than driving alone. Another outcome from this approach is increased word-of-mouth advertising to increase participation.


While many TDM agencies seem to focus most of their resources on trying to convert the "drive alone" commuter, approaches like NuRide reflect an understanding that it should be less expensive to retain existing customers (and increase "purchasing" behavior) than attract new customers and pay for performance (the more you do, the more points you earn). Given the erosion of the regular use of transit and carpooling over the years, one wonders how many more people would have remained in those modes if more attention (and resources) were placed on retaining existing transit riders, carpoolers, etc. Still, it isn't too late to start.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Double taxation risk for out-of-state teleworkers - FederalTimes.com

In her letter on May 17 to FederalTimes.com, Nicole Belson Goluboff, author of "The Law of Telecommuting" and "Telecommuting for Lawyers" and member of the advisory board of the Telework Coalition (www.TelCoa.org) discusses double taxation risk for some out-of-state teleworkers.

Clearly, this is an obstacle for expanding the use of telework. HR 2600 Telecommuters Tax Fairness Act of 2009 would prohibit "a state from imposing an income tax on the compensation of a nonresident individual for any period in which such individual is not physically present in or working in such state or from deeming such nonresident individual to be present in or working in such state on the grounds that: (1) such individual is present at or working at home for convenience; or (2) such individual's work at home fails any convenience of the employer test or any similar test." For the status of this bill, search THOMAS on "Telecommuters Tax Fairness Act of 2009".