These 3 Charts Show That the Commuter Benefit System Is Terribly Broken

Congress recently failed to maintain parity for commuter benefits, granting drivers up to $250 a month but dropping transit riders down to $130. The decision is terrible for both sides — transit riders obviously lose, but so do drivers, since the incentive for a single-occupancy commute will increase traffic — but it shouldn't be that surprising. In fact the few brief years of benefit equality were the exception, not the rule:

That's from a recent brief on commuter benefits presented by the Center for Urban Transportation Research, at the University of South Florida. As the CUTR talk made clear, transit riders aren't the only commuters getting the short end of the benefit stick. A breakdown by wage group shows that workers in the bottom quartile of earnings are far less likely to have access to subsidized benefits than workers at the top: