Do you remember the last time you had enjoyed the fresh morning breeze against your face during the time of your early morning commute or parked your vehicle in the parking lot with a big smile on your face? Still thinking? Well it is going to be some time before you can actually figure out any such occurrence. It is the same old story everyday when you have to literally ‘jostle’ for parking space. You can actually avoid this regular struggle by opting for a bike to work scheme.
The benefits of using a cycle to work are manifold:
Environment friendly: Riding a cycle in place of a car can earn you brownie points when it comes to contributing to the environment. It also improves road safety as biking is much safer than driving.
Time saving: You do not need to spend hours stuck in a traffic snarl as you can easily use the pathways meant for biking and reach your workplace. Biking to work will thus automatically save your valuable time.
Improve your Fitness: Our hectic work schedule hardly allows us to workout. While you bike to work, you end up benefiting from it. You can save a lot of time as you do not have to spend an hour in the gym trying to keep fit.
Relief from Stress: Biking to work implies a physical activity and this can go a long way in getting rid of stress and improve your work productivity.
There are several Irish cycling trails spread across the length and breadth of the countryside which make for a wonderful ride. The introduction of the bike to work scheme has encouraged several employers and employees to adopt the same. The construction of pathways meant especially for biking has even made it easy for the riders to make their way through the congested lanes of the cities.
Tags: Bike to Work, biking
Could you ever think of cycling initiative taken as a major way of office transport system? Yes, with government intervention employers and employee have been able to make a congruent system called “Bike to Work”.
What is this scheme “Bike to work” all about?
It is a green transport plan where an employee would choose a bicycle and associated safety equipment to a certain maximum value and the employer would be responsible for paying for this to the bike providing company. Well, the bike and accessories are the permanent property of the employee but they have an obligation to pay back the costs to the employer (obviously tax exemptions are there) within 12 months or so.
Now this payment could be made through salary sacrifice arrangement and you can do some savings as well. Under the contract of employment, an employee may pay the amount directly from his gross salary account on a monthly basis. Hence in effect you need not to repay from your net salary which is less than the gross. Even with 12 months of long span, the monthly payback is quite affordable.
To avail the sponsorship facility you have to be a salaried person either full-time or part-time and must be paying tax in your country. Regarding the maintenance your local shop can advise you the needful. Like other household policies you can also insure your bicycle either through home insurance agents or specialist insurers.
With such bicycle scheme you can enjoy a lot more freedom also. Once your payback period is over you can use it everywhere even if you join another company. Now the most important aspect is to obtain the tax-free bikes. For this your company would issue you a voucher. You need to show it to a local participating bicycle shop and redeem the voucher.
Tags: bicycle, bicycle scheme, Bike to Work