Originally Posted by
HawkOwl
...This all means that cycling is seen more and more as mainstream transportation that consumes resources. People want to see where cyclists are "paying their fair share" whatever that is determined to be. They want to see that payment as direct flow from cycling; not just as a secondary or tertiary effect from general taxpayers who also ride bikes.
We've seen many posts on BF that attempt to justify why roads, bridges, etc should have extra capability to accomodate cyclists but without plans on how to pay for those facilities. We are rapidly coming to the end of the time where such facilities can be sold on the basis of "public good" without a clear payment method.
All this really is a testimony to past successes and an awakening that there is a new day and new challenges.
Considering the fact that user fees extracted from motorists pay for less than half of the cost of building and maintaining roadways, not even counting police, emergency services, cost of human carnage, military costs to secure oil or the impact of pollution, it is rather outrageous to expect such a benign means of transportation as cycling to be the only mode that is expected to pay its own way. Many cyclists have been heavily subsidizing motorists, and will continue to subsidize them, for many years. If a wee bit of infrastructure is built with general funds that is not for cars it is rather pathetic that we have people who complain about it. Those same people complain when cyclists are on the roads (that are largely paid for and have the car-caused damage repaired with our tax dollars) and then they complain when a strip of asphalt is built to allow us to move about without being on the road.