Amazon to offer best practice bicycle commuting benefits, at least to corporate employees

Amazon, like Walmart, has a lot of negative effects on independent retail, and adds to traffic congestion via its "same day delivery" offer, which has significantly increased package delivery.  

And it uses its economic power to browbeat its "partners", such as forcing them to sell a portion of their business to the company, to maintain access to the Amazon e-commerce site ("Amazon Demands One More Thing From Some Vendors: A Piece of Their Company," Wall Street Journal).

But in developing their headquarters in Seattle, they made a number of proffers that were beneficial to transit, such as buying the city another streetcar, and paying for more frequent service ("Amazon to Buy 4th Streetcar, Fund 10-Minute Headways," Seattle Transit), the commercial district such as agreeing to not have on-site food service, thereby encouraging employees to spend money at area businesses, and bike infrastructure ("Amazon gives a push to biking downtown," Seattle Times).

Geekwire ("Amazon offering new $170 monthly benefit to employees who commute to work by bike") and WTOP ("Amazon will pay HQ2 employees in Arlington to bike to work") report on Amazon's latest announcement that they will be offering significant benefits to bicycle commuters, benefits that are significantly greater than those available via the traditional federal commuter benefits program.  From Geekwire:

Amazon says in Seattle more than 20% of its employees walk or bike to work and another 50% use public transportation or carpooling options. The company already provides free transit passes to all employees.

The federal benefit for biking is up to $20/month, while it is more than 10x greater for driving.

Bicycle parking at the Seattle Amazon headquarters complex.

The new Amazon benefits are up to $170 per month and include:

• Bike leases: Employees can lease a take-home bike, including e-bikes, for a monthly fee eligible for reimbursement. 
• Bike share: Employees can expense costs for dockless or docked short-term, app-based rental bicycles. 
• Maintenance: Employees can take advantage of two complimentary tune-ups each calendar year. Amazon will bring a provider on-site that employees can use, or if employees prefer to use their own services, they will be reimbursed. 
• Bike parking: Employees can access bike parking at public transit facilities or offices without Amazon bike cages.

These are in addition to secure bike parking and shower facilities for bike commuters, at least at their Seattle facilities ("Amazon encourages employees to bike to work—with a new perk").

In all, these are significant benefits and should be a model to other firms in bike/walking/transit centric areas.

Definitely the "bike lease" idea is the flip side of "cycle borrowing," "loans for bikes" and "employer assisted bicycle purchase programs" initiatives as discussed in "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs."  The "maintenance" benefit is a nice perk too, and a benefit common to college bicycle programs.