How to pee Off an Arrogant Pedalcyclist 4372

Brent P

It is not nonsense. It is nonsense that you ignore the figures that show that motor vehicle taxes are not only paying for the highways, they are also paying for other services unrelated to highways (like garbage collection). I don't care if you ride your bikes on the roads (as long as you act responsibly) but I do care that you claim to be paying for those roads in ways unrelated to motor vehicle taxes. I suppose you can argue that taxes are taxes and expenses are expenses and everyone pays some sort of taxes and therefore everyone is justified in claiming the rights to use anything taxes have been used to build. This is not how road taxes were sold to the public. At least in North Carolina, high gas taxes were justified because they were paying for the roads. They were set apart from general fund revenues as special. Now admittedly this is becoming a sort of elaborate shell game (see Social Security), but at least they try to maintain the illusion of road derived revenue being used to build and maintain roads. If I drive my car, I buy gas and pay into the road funds. When I buy my car, I pay into the road funds, when I renew my auto registration, I pay into the road fund. When I bought my bike, I did not pay into the road fund. I don't buy gas for my bike, so I don't pay into the road fund. I don't have to renew by bike's registration (well not any more, Raleigh briefly tired to force bike registration). So if we are really treating things as separate funds, I've paid a lot into the road use funds because I own and operate cars. I have paid nothing into the road use fund because I own a bike. You make the argument that you should be able to ride your bike on the roads because you also own a car. Using this logic, I should only have to pay for one car. Any others should be covered. I should also be able to ride an ATV on the roads, after all, I paid for one auto. I disagree with this logic. At least for NC, Illinois, Washington and the City of Chicago I have seen figures that confirm that general revenues are not being used for road construction and maintenance. In fact road fund revenues are being diverted for other purposes (gotta love the removal of fish impediments in Washington).

I believe that most states explicitly allow bicycles on many roads. This right was granted by the legislature and not because cyclist are paying their fair share for the building and maintaining roads. I think it would be reasonable to require bicycles to be registered and require licenses for riders that use the public highways (maybe just State Federal Roads and not City Streets and County Roads).

Interesting how you cut off all the figures that illustrated how road tax money is being diverted to pay for other items. It is clear you don't want to know the facts or at least you prefer that others don't know the facts.

Ed