Originally Posted by
corrado33
The argument of "bikes are vehicles" is valid however, cars are registered in classes. Small cars, full sized cars, small SUVs, huge trucks etc. Each one paying more than the previous due to weight. Since my 3500 lb car costs ~$60-$80 a year to register, that'd make my 20 lb bike.... $0.34 a year to register. And that's assuming a linear relationship, which it is not.
As you said, it's not even close to linear.
If you're looking for a more fair comparison, look at what they charge for a motorcycle compared to a car. I don't know what state you're in so I can't look up the figure there, but here in Texas a motorcycle pays about half of what a passenger car pays, even though it may weigh around 10% as much on average. If we were to continue this trend, a bicycle would cost around $20/year. Which still might not pay for the administration of the system (or it might) -- but it's way more than $0.34.
Note that arguments about "damage done to the road" don't really carry much weight in this [not that you brought up this argument, just saying this in general.] Passenger cars don't do much damage to the road either -- it's the big trucks that do that, them and mother nature/time. Even paths that *never* have motor vehicles on them deteriorate due to the passage of time, and still need maintenance, and we can't charge mother nature, so if we wanted to charge the users of the road, that would mean pedestrians and/or cyclists -- not motorists.
So if a road has both bicycles and motor vehicles using it, and we wanted to charge the users for the construction and maintenance of the road fairly -- we'd need to charge both groups, even though the bicycles do zero damage to the road. Presumably the rate for a bicycle would be less than that for a passenger car, but it shouldn't be zero.
(That said, considering that in the US roads are mostly paid for by sales, property and income taxes rather than fuel taxes, I see this as a non-issue -- there's no need to directly charge bicycles just because they're on the road, except maybe for a road that is charging cars a toll.)