Originally Posted by
genec
No, what I meant is that drivers do not EXCLUSIVELY own the roads, nor pay to use them any more than any other public citizen that also pays sales tax, property tax and registration fees.
OK, but that's not what you said at all. And you're still forgetting fuel taxes.
I drive my car less than average, and it's a subcompact so it gets good mileage -- but I still pay hundreds of dollars in fuel taxes on it each year. Those mostly go straight to paying for roads, without a whole lot of infrastructure needed to actually collect this money.
Check on that registration fee thing... In CA that funding goes to pay not only for the DMV, but also for various print materials and very little of it goes to the state coffers.
And in Texas 25% of the state fuel tax goes to
education (and by that I mean public schools, not even driver's education.) But even so, it's a bunch of money, and doesn't cost much to collect (not compared to what is collected, anyways), and while it doesn't pay for all the roads -- it certainly does pay for a significant chunk of them.
It doesn't cost that much to collect registration fees. Around here, it's $70 bucks or so each year, you get new plates every seven years that are included, and the administration is basically accepting a check and mailing out a fancy paper with your new tags on them. They even charge a $1 fee if you do it by mail.
I don't know anything about these print materials you're referring to, but even if the money is siphoned off to pay for something else, that doesn't mean that the "Fees collected barely pay for the licensing services themselves". But that statement probably does apply to drivers licenses -- here they cost $25 but that includes a new picture, finger print, eye test, etc. But it lasts for six years. (And the rates went up recently. Used to be $16 and last for ten years.)
But bottom line, since most cyclists are also drivers, they pay for all the above, and don't cause the same wear and tear on the roads while they bike, thus, the cyclists' taxes and fees subsidize the roads for motorists.
The problem with this argument is that
passenger cars don't cause significant wear and tear on the roads either. (Big trucks do, however. But they also pay a bunch of additional fees in addition to their higher fuel taxes due to their higher fuel consumption. Is it enough to pay for their additional wear and tear? I do not know, but I suspect not.)
Most of the time, most of the wear and tear is caused by mother nature and/or time. Still costs money to fix, and building the road in the first place still costs money.