Originally Posted by
dougmc
I don't know about where you live, but here in Texas,
vehicle registration costs are not proportional to weight unless you get over five tons --
Here, all passenger vehicles and trucks under three tons pay a base fee of $51. Vehicles between three and five tons pay a base fee of $54.
Motorcycles and mopeds pay $30.
Presumably if bicycles were registered here and the current progression was continued, we'd probably pay around $20/year, not the pennies/year you think would be fair.
1) if this is the case, then the weight of you plus your vehicle should be what's used, not just your vehicle's weight, and
2) this isn't even remotely true -- it's worse.
Road damage rises steeply with axle weight, and is estimated "as a rule of thumb... for reasonably strong pavement surfaces" to be proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. This means that doubling the axle weight will increase road damage (2x2x2x2)=16 times..
Of course, what this means is that in practice, bicycles, motorcycles and passenger vehicles do negligible amounts of damage to roads -- it's the large trucks that do it. But lighter vehicles do still clog the roads, and the weather still takes its toll, and the road still had to be built in the first place, so pretending that road fees should be based only on how much damage a vehicle does to the roads is shortsighted.
Doug, most of that was already discussed. As mentioned earlier, while it is true that damage rises with the fourth power of axle weight I'll get all sorts of arguments about the pressure and small size of contact patch if I propose that ratio (some of which are valid btw) while if I just say "proportional" that seems reasonable.
I said I wouldn't mind paying an amount proportional to weight. I didn't say we already did, although rates for larger vehicles are now tiered by weight.
I said about a dollar, not pennies. As for the math, an average cyclist and bike at 180 pounds, divided by an average midsized car at 3500 pounds, times the fee of $20 equals one dollar and three cents. Pretty close to "a dollar" isn't it? If you do insist on the fourth power ratio, then it's not "pennies" - it's "fractions of a penny".
Finally, these roads last many years without traffic, so weather is not that significant to the wear. Sure there are exceptions, such as rare floods and sinkholes, but for the vast majority of our roads it's almost all due to the traffic.