Seminara joins a van pool!

[Pablo]

WTH has this world come to?

May as well get in the gravy train and dupe the taxpayers. So many perks, so little time. This thing is so incentivised:

$300 gift card, fully useable anywhere. (not included in my monthly calculation)
$25 cash from work plus entry into some sweet drawings with great odds
_________________________________________
$50 month incentive from the city.
$5 month banking allowance
$20 month van wash allowance (not even me washing!)
$5.42 month back up driver allowance (not me!)
$25 month voucher from work

Cost to me? $7.21 per month for a 24 mile round trip ride! I'm not calculating the wear and tear!

Park and fert is just down the road.

Gawd I love communism.

 

[Sam3]

Pablo, In times like these we should all do whatever we can to help out. Good job.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Yeah P, help yourself, why don't ya?

 

[PandaBear]

Nothnig wrong with giving incentive for carpooling. You get less cars on the road, less road maintanence, less road expansion, less traffic, less clean up after accidents, etc etc. That saves government and other non-carpooler money in an invisible ways.

This has been around for along time in the US, nothing to do with communism. If you can give company tax break, why not this?

I bet you haven't heard about carpool lane yet, have you? That's the biggest incentive of all.

Of course, unless you are the oil company, car dealership, or engine oil reseller....

[ September 14, 2005, 06:28 PM: Message edited by: PandaBear ]

 

[Pablo]

No carpool lanes between my pickup and work. But all arterials through the hills.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

NYC companies buy employees metrocards in lieu of salary. Saves on P/R tax.

 

[Pablo]

"I understand the philosophy, it's the economics that leave me broke"

world citizen, ca 2005

 

[Schmoe]

I don't understand. You company is giving you all that stuff to carpool? Ed-u-mah-cate me.

 

[PandaBear]

Intel has a buspool from Livermore to their San Jose office. They have 2 employees with business license and rented the bus from the local bus company. Each morning they drive 30 or so employees to San Jose, and then turn over the bus to the local bus route, reverse at the end of the day.

The Livermore Lab has a 14 people van pool from San Francisco to Livremore. HP has another van pool that from what I heard has 9 people. My last company used to sponsor 2 van pool, employee pays for the gas, employer pays for everything else. That stopped when a penny pinching manager comes in with a pledge to turn profitable in 1 year.

 

[Pablo]

My company.
The city.
Two counties.
The state.

They all give incentives to VANpool. Using a county owned van. It does make some level of sense on the macro level as PB points out (in sort of an insulting way) it's just so spread around I wonder about the burro-craptic loss. It makes way too much since at my microwallet level. It is almost like they pay ME to do this!

 

[eljefino]

Good work.

I personally work wierd hours on a radially different tangent from my office compared to the only other guy with my same shift. So I can't carpool. But I can pay gas tax* and am happy to see it help someone, and even happier you're taking them up on the offer.

So, let me get this straight, you ride, don't drive, and have nothing to do with the upkeep of the van?

* as much as 40mpg can pay.

 

[PandaBear]

Pablo, sorry about the "insult", I was trying to extend your sense of humor. I appologize.

 

[Pablo]

Task achieved - smiling now!

 

[Schmoe]

Wish we had something like that here in Oklahomastan.