Lyft brings pre-tax commuter benefits deal to 14 more cities
Instead of using commuter benefits money to ride the bus to work with those pre-tax dollars, you can order a car on Lyft or Uber -- as long as you're willing to share the ride (and your company offers the option).
While Uber offers the benefit throughout the U.S. for its UberPool customers, Lyft is still catching up. Lyft announced Monday that its commuter benefits program was expanding from a meager four cities to 18. The ride-hailing app first offered the option on Lyft Line rides last year, about half a year after Uber rolled out the service for its UberPool carpool option.
In constant competition, Lyft Line will now be available with your pre-tax dollars in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Previously, the benefit was online available in New York City, Boston, Seattle, and Miami. Lyft claims more than 40 percent of Lyft riders already use the app to commute.
If your company uses any of these benefit providers, you can ride using your commuter card as the payment method (just be sure to add the new payment method on the app): WageWorks, Benefit Resource, Commuter Benefit Solutions, Navia, Zenefits, and Ameriflex.
Once your benefit info is in there, you can use the Line option as usual, which means you'll order a car that might pick up five other passengers on your way to work. While not super efficient, it may just beat the bus.
Topics lyft
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
