http://www.seattlepi.com/local/trans...de-1259833.php
The idea of charging cyclists a registration fee has been floated by lawmakers in Olympia, but not seriously considered in recent years. For each of the past several years, legislators have asked transportation officials at look into the idea of establishing such a program, said Paula Reeves, of the state Department of Transportation.
After talking with other states, the department believes the programs raise little money -- if any -- beyond what they cost to run, Reeves said. "We wouldn't see a big opportunity to improve facilities with that kind of a program," she said. "We also have some survey results that are fairly recent that show that most cyclists also own a car or multiple cars, so they're paying license fees and gas taxes."
Read more:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/trans...#ixzz26NPcoCrT
Highway advocates often claim that roads "pay for themselves," with gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists covering—or nearly covering—the full cost of highway construction and maintenance.
They are wrong.
Highways do not—and, except for brief periods in our nation’s history—never have paid for themselves through the taxes that highway advocates label ěuser fees.î Yet highway advocates continue to suggest they do in an attempt to secure preferential access to scarce public resources and to shape how those resources are spent.
http://www.calpirg.org/reports/caf/d...tation-funding
Now let me set the record straight, I said that license fees and the like provide no revenue... and that is NOT correct, as revenue is basically the straight income into the state coffers... but bear in mind that the revenue is then used to pay expenses, such as roads and for licenses bureaus and the like. If states raised the fees, then indeed there would be a profit difference that could be used for such things as road improvement, beyond basic maintenance, but thus far no state has chosen to do this. (I think Montana may the exception)
Several jurisdictions have tried to license and tax cyclists and have generally found that the expenses and the income were a wash and that ultimately it wasn't worth the hassle. Odd as one would think that if this were a profitable thing, the states would jump all over it. Perhaps the real issue is that there really are not enough regular cyclists in the US to make this work, and charging cyclists just seems to discourage cycling.