Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
Indeed, very backwards setup. Overall for suburban/urban areas it makes sense to subsidize path construction. Car-commuting arteries & commuter trains are clogged & expanding capacity is often impossible or at least very expensive, every bike commuter helps alleviate that a little bit.
No, it really doesn't help that cause. According to most of the figures I have seen, it costs between $500k to $1M per mile of linear trail construction, trails that generally aren't useful for commuting, and costs that mean the simple scale of not selling many bikes at $25 a pop in tax will result in almost nothing built. Even at a percentage, your actual revenues are still fairly nothing. Likewise, that revenue is a mere pinhead of a drop in a bucket for overall road funding, if you are talking more bike lanes than trails.
It is really nothing but feel-good legislation that bikes are paying their "fair share".