Food For Thought?

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 73245 wrote:

I specifically quoted the part of your posted that said established recreational cyclists shouldn’t be interested in encouraging more cycling. I think that attitude is misguided. I think more cycling makes all cycling safer – even your hypothetical guy who only bikes on the w&od because it crosses roads – and if the forum is to believed, drivers at those crossings aren’t always safe (and possibly for other reasons).

I don’t support the tax either, but I do think all cyclists benefit from programs that get more butts on bikes.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

I really don’t know if the drivers doing dangerous things crossing the W&OD would be impacted much by an increase in the number of cyclists. The studies showing the safety benefits of increased number of cyclists are at a larger scale than that, I think, and I’ve got to beleive are driven 99% by collisions impacting folks biking on roads. If I were a cyclist who rode only on trails, I would not be against programs to encourage more cycling (perhaps having more drivers at the trail crossings would offset increased crowding on the trails – perhaps I should have specified a section of trail with no road crossings – the C&O towpath perhaps, or a mountain biker who never rides off the back trails), but I would certainly resent paying for it. And rightfully, I think.

[mstone]

I think you just want to complain about taxes, which is certainly your right, but can be done without resorting to straw men like the person who lives adjacent to the WOD but only bikes on it on an occasional recreational basis. In reality, that person isn’t going to pay any registration tax and isn’t spending much money on bikes anyway. If they’re that pissed off about taxes they’ll buy in another jurisdiction and avoid a POS tax in the unlikely event that the tax amounts to enough money to bother.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 73259 wrote:

I think you just want to complain about taxes, which is certainly your right, but can be done without resorting to straw men like the person who lives adjacent to the WOD but only bikes on it on an occasional recreational basis. In reality, that person isn’t going to pay any registration tax and isn’t spending much money on bikes anyway. If they’re that pissed off about taxes they’ll buy in another jurisdiction and avoid a POS tax in the unlikely event that the tax amounts to enough money to bother.

There isn’t even a serious proposal for such a tax in Fairfax anyway, so not much to complain about (I cheerfully paid the sales tax on my Dew). I just am frustratrated with the illogic of considering a bike tax (POS, or license) to fund a County bike program to be a “user fee”. Same reason I find the claims that funding roads out of gas taxes is a user fee to ignore important issues of differential road usage by time of day, etc.

But yeah, I need to ride. Yesterday was glorious, and I got dragged to multiple New Years open houses and spent almost the whole day indoors.

[baiskeli]

@PotomacCyclist 72734 wrote:

It’s already possible to torpedo the freeloader claim without adding a bike tax. Any cyclist who pays other taxes (income, general sales, etc.) is already helping to pay for car/bike/pedestrian infrastructure, at the federal and state levels. At the same time, cyclists do not destroy infrastructure the way that heavy trucks, buses and cars do.

Yes, it’s easily destroyed. About 1/3rd or more of road costs come from general revenues, not the gas tax or other user taxes. That means cyclists probably pay MORE than their share when you consider their tiny impact on the roads.

Don’t ever let anyone use the freeloader argument, it’s bogus.

[elbows]

I’m adding link to this thread, in part so that the next time I go looking for data on how much drivers are freeloading, I can find some good structuring of the issue.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving-true-costs/412237/?utm_source=SFTwitter

[PotomacCyclist]

The article doesn’t cover what might be the biggest expenditure of all, which is defense spending to protect overseas oil-producing regions. Much of our defense spending goes toward military actions in oil-producing countries. No secret there. We get involved when the sovereignty of a Middle Eastern country is threatened but not in many other regions. We are far more willing to believe flimsy evidence about WMDs in these regions too, leading to more massively expensive military actions and wars. Why is this relevant? Because our dependency on oil is a national weakness that forces our hand, and leads us to spend so much money on military actions in the Middle East. Recent wars have cost trillions of dollars. (I’ve read estimates of $2 trillion to as much as $8 trillion.) None of that gets built into the cost of a gallon of gas, but it should be, if people demand that we not subsidize anything (which is really a joke because all major transportation modes are heavily subsidized).

There’s also the national security angle, apart from the cost. All that spending on oil props up the worldwide oil market, sending billions of dollars to oil-producing countries and groups that control oil production, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and ISIS/ISIL. A surprising number of people think that car driving is inherently patriotic. Freedom of the American road and all that. But why is it patriotic to help prop up groups like ISIS and Iran? People get defensive about these points, but so what? People’s feelings get hurt, but that pales in comparison with all the financial support that oil dependency gives to ISIS and Iran. I’d rather spend that money on bike infrastructure, mass transit and alternative fuel R&D and production. People scream about $4/gallon biofuels but think nothing of spending trillions of dollars on military actions that are largely based on protecting oil supplies. It really is insane to spend that much money, then claim that alternative energy and active transportation modes are wasteful and too expensive.

[DismalScientist]

A better description would probably be that the U.S. military is protecting Europe’s ability to access market rate oil. North America is near balance in terms of petroleum consumption and production.

But if you really want to eschew fossil fuel use, I suppose you can rid of all these silly plastic bikes.:rolleyes:

[PotomacCyclist]

Well, my bikes are aluminum and I mostly ride the steel (or aluminum) CaBi bikes.

[consularrider]

@DismalScientist 126848 wrote:

A better description would probably be that the U.S. military is protecting Europe’s ability to access market rate oil. North America is near balance in terms of petroleum consumption and production.

But if you really want to eschew fossil fuel use, I suppose you can rid of all these silly plastic bikes.:rolleyes:

Where do we get out steel and aluminium these days?

[mstone]

@consularrider 126873 wrote:

Where do we get out steel and aluminium these days?

The antique store?

[Author]

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