Paying for transit with pre-tax income

The LATimes Bottleneck blog highlighted a story about San Francisco passing legislation requiring employers to offer transit passes (or transportation to and from work) as part of the overall benefits package with pre-tax income. This is a great idea. Parking is already provided as a non-income perk for many employees, though often in violation of California's Parking Cash Out legislaton. By offering transit with pre-tax ncome the hidden subsidies to driving are reduced a bit. Not everyone will switch to transit of course, but not everyone needs to. Making transit more attractive and treating it as a viable alternative to driving is as important to encouraging people to switch from driving as building new transit facilities.