Originally Posted by bcspain
You guys know what will happen next don't you? Since a tremendous portion of the price of gas is actually federal, state, and local taxes, all the agencies will find a way tax bike riders. I saw a little blurb on CNN or Foxnews, don't remember which about some technology that was being kicked around to charge per mile instead of per gallon. High fuel efficiency cars get in the government's pocket, so what they were proposing was a way for the fuel pump to interface with the car's onboard computer to see how far you'd driven, thereby adjusting the price per gallon. The guy that drives the 10 mpg gas hog would get gas for (these numbers are examples only, don't take off on a tangent) say $3.00 per gallon for 20 gallons, but the guy with the fancy experimental hybrid that gets 200 mpg would pay $60 per gallon, assuming they both drove 200 miles between fillups.
We as riders should take care, as we demand more bike paths and what have you, the government could and probably will start insisting on registration fees and other use taxes. You could find your favorite bike path suddenly has a toll gate at each end.
That sounds counterintuitive. Would the gal with the hybrid have to pay more - even though she got better mileage? That sound like a disincentive.
Your second point, about taxing bike paths, here in Canuckaland, both the Federal and Provincial governments tax the hell out of gas (and everything else-welcome to socialism 101, comrade!). But very little of the money seems to be put back into the roadway infrastructure. I think the new prices will force these government to start paying some of this money back (some work has already been done here). But once this happens, I can see user pay and privately run bike and recreation paths - welcome to capitalism 101.
That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, better than what the cities can afford now.