{"id":108166510,"date":"2008-06-05T22:15:10","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T22:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=108166510"},"modified":"2008-06-05T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T22:15:10","slug":"worthy-of-a-bike-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=108166510","title":{"rendered":"Worthy of a Bike Statue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Daniel Hamermesh<br \/>\nMy Dutch co-author and I biked to his office this morning, with very nice new bikes he owns. I remarked on them, and he said his university gives him the right to buy a bike out of pre-tax income every three years.<br \/>\nEvery Dutch employer can offer this triennial subsidy of $750. I thought that was quite interesting, and asked why.<br \/>\nThe answer is that earlier the government gave employees a subsidy on commuting costs, but only if they lived at least 10 kilometers from work. He says the government realized that this was unfair to short-distance commuters and, worse still, increased incentives to live far from work and to use gasoline that generated air pollution.<br \/>\nThe bicycle subsidy is designed to counter those effects; and it is also consistent with the national image as devoted to bike-riding. (The Netherlands is the only place I have seen a public statue\/monument consisting of a 10-meter-tall bicycle!)<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/06\/04\/worthy-of-a-bike-statue\/\">https:\/\/freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/06\/04\/worthy-of-a-bike-statue\/<\/a>oldId.2008060522151019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Daniel Hamermesh My Dutch co-author and I biked to his office this morning, with very nice new bikes he owns. I remarked on them, and he said his university gives him the right to buy a bike out of pre-tax income every three years. Every Dutch employer can offer this triennial subsidy of $750. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=108166510\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Worthy of a Bike Statue&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108166510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108166510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108166510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108166510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108166510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108166510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108166510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}