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“Commuting by bike even one day during the week would reduce the city’s carbon footprint and traffic,” Mayor Healy says in a press release announcing Jersey City’s Bike to Work week. “We are encouraging those who normally drive to their offices in Jersey City, to get on a bike.”

While there’s no doubt the growth of the cycling scene in Jersey City is a promising sign, there is still much work to be done — particularly in cutting down on automobile commuting within the city.

The Jersey City Mobility 2050 study, which was released in 2009, gauged the transportation habits of people in three categories: those who work in Jersey City and live elsewhere, those who live in Jersey City and work elsewhere, and those who live and work in Jersey City.

Not surprisingly, those who live and work in Jersey City were found to have the highest rate of walking or biking to work, at 25 percent. But the same group of people were found to have the lowest rate of mass transit use (36 percent) and the highest rate of automobile use (39 percent).

There are a variety of reasons for the high automobile use, some more difficult to account for than others, and a variety of ways to reduce it. But as critics — including this news organization — have pointed out, there’s one simple thing the city could do: stop subsidizing vehicle parking for city employees, particularly those near transit hubs.

Last year, for example, the city approved a two-year lease extension for the rental of 116 parking spots along Columbus Drive for workers at 30 Montgomery St., to a tune of $104,400 a year. Under the agreement, the city pays the Parking Authority $75 per month per spot, $50 less per spot than the agency would charge residents or commuters. As we’ve pointed out, this policy not only provides unnecessary parking perks for city workers, but it also deprives the Parking Authority of up to $69,600 of revenue each year.

A hundred grand might be small potatoes when it comes to the overall city budget, but in a year in which city spending has faced increased scrutiny as property taxes have increased and city workers have been furloughed and laid off, every line item should be examined.

This expenditure is not only unnecessary; the underlying rationale is bad policy, and it stands in direct opposition to the administration’s stated goals of working towards a “greener” Jersey City.

We’re sure that many of the workers at 30 Montgomery, which sits just a stone’s throw away from PATH, light rail and bus lines at Exchange Place, would continue to drive to work if the parking perks were taken away, out of want or necessity. But if they make that choice, they should pay for the spot themselves, at the market rate. (For workers whose parking spots might be necessary for on-the-job travels throughout the city, perhaps a small handful of spots could be retained to house shared fleet cars.)

If the city wants to get serious about cutting down “the city’s carbon footprint and traffic,” as the mayor claims, shouldn’t it, at the very least, not subsidize the cost of increasing said carbon footprint and traffic?