CrankyOne

Interesting chart and discussion:

Chart of the Day: Road Funding by Source | streets.mn

B. Carfree

School me here: isn't bond revenue also a non-user source of road funds. Locally, my city has a $50/parcel/year tax to pay for a road repair bond. I assume this is what they mean by the green line down at 10%.

CrankyOne

I would assume so yes. Most bonds are really nothing more than loans. I suppose it would be possible for the payback scheme to be from user fees but I wouldn't think that likely.

dedhed

Bonds are usually paid off by all taxpayers, users and non users alike.

Wanderer

Yeppers, over 50% of the cost of roads is paid by every taxpayer. The less than 50% is paid by people buying motor fuels.

Motor fuel taxes would really have to go up, to maintain their share of damage to the infrastructure the motorized public use -------- LOL

Looigi

Even without motorized vehicles using them, roads will still deteriorate from the elements. I've been on many a MUP with heaves, pot holes, cracks... both asphalt and concrete. In fact, it seems the mups and bike paths deteriorate faster than roads, but that's likely be due to being constructed to lesser standards and getting less maintenance. And for what it's worth, my car is much more tolerant of poor roads than my road bike.

fietsbob

Somebody needs to run for a seat on their State transportation Committee Board , to make a difference ..

B. Carfree

When any road is grossly underbelt and poorly sited, which many bike paths and mups are (no appropriate underlayment, placed along freshly constructed berms on streams/lakes/rivers and such) they are going to fail in a hurry. However, one major cause of the failure of my local bike paths is the tremendous number of (often illegal) heavy motor vehicles that operate on them. Add in the fact that the people who designed them were all apparently drunk (not a straight line to be found) and the fact that heavy vehicles shear asphalt when they brake and turn (just check out any county road; the potholes start where motorized wheels are braking and/or turning), and there's a lot more in play than weather and poor construction.

I also happen to live where there is precious little weather that can damage the roads. Hard freezes aren't really a thing here.

B. Carfree

Time to join the wider, supple tire revolution.

https://janheine.wordpress.com/2015/...compass-tires/

Bines

My wife and I own a home, a car, two pickup trucks and a motorcycle. We are both gainfully employed. Point is, we pay taxes. We pay for the roads. Just because we may be sometimes seen on bicycles doesn't mean we don't.

Dunbar

I ride/bike 3-4X as many miles as I drive which means I'm paying for roads that I'm not really using. Ditto people who bicycle commute to work. There are many ways to look at it.

kickstart

But you are still using them, directly and indirectly.

But really its a moot point, we all use them, and pay for them just the same, one way or the other.

Dunbar

But the wear and tear on the roads from bicycles is negligible. Shifting driving miles to riding miles means significantly less wear and tear on the roads and I'd guess most of the money is being spent on repaving existing roads (at least here in Los Angeles.) I thought one of the main reasons user revenue is declining is that fuel economy is going up which is a good thing.

B. Carfree

Yes, what exists is indeed paid for (duh). The issue is whether the payment scheme is fair. Certainly there is damage that is done by the elements in many areas of the nation that we all need to pay for. Certainly there is a benefit to society to have freight moving, which is one of the reasons the weight-mile taxes are well below any reasonable estimate of the damage done by trucks.

However, there's no doubt that individual private automobiles are doing much more road damage than the users are paying for. Is this a proper activity to subsidize? Sure, many people enjoy the recreational aspects of driving, but there's a huge downside in terms of cost (roads), environmental damage (local air, climate change, oil industry spills) and health (diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cancer, heart disease). Politically, cars are going to continue to be subsidized for a while. Rationally, this just doesn't cut it.

Dunbar

One more interesting fact that I remember reading in Car and Driver magazine (years ago) is that an 80,000lb. semi truck does 300X the wear and tear to a road as one car.

B. Carfree

But it's carrying over a thousand times the payload.

79pmooney

Here in Oregon, studded tires do a lot of damage. The busy highways become near undriveable in a light car in just a few years. It is very obvious that cars with studs don't remotely pay for the damage they do. (Never mind that they erase all paint very fast, including bike lane paint on every right hand bend in the road.)

Ben

kickstart

Is there such a thing as "fair" if we don't think about just #1 ?

Is it fair I pay for public transportation I can't us? Is it fair motorists who don't ride bikes pay for bike facilities? Is it fair that pedestrians pay for bike facilities on buses and trains?

We all stand on the shoulders of others.

kickstart

But commercial vehicles are essential to life as we know it.

Individually we can survive without an automobile or bicycle, collectively society perishes without transportation.

Wanderer

That would put the gross payload at 300,000 pounds - not hardly realistic. When most places are limited to 80,000 on limited roads.....

genec

The real point to all this is that the costs of the road are shared by all of us, and that motorists in particular have no special exclusive "burden" nor "ownership" of the road, and thus certain drivers should get off their "high horses" with regard to how cyclists don't pay their way.

kickstart

Not true, it depends on the configuration of the vehicle. I used to drive trucks that grossed 105,500.

Wanderer

Please reread.............. I've driven grossed out over 200,000 - but with special permit and routing ---- not "normal". Normally, we are limited to 73,280......

Rollfast

Answer: EVERYONE.

Virtually all things you own or use involve the use of a roadway for transportation of some part or completed item. Therefore, in some manner, everyone pays into the taxes that fund roads.

EVERYTHING. We all pay these taxes, directly or indirectly.

The argument about certain users not paying their fair share for the roads is vacuous and irrational. It is settled here.

Cyclosaurus

The problem I have with the arguments about who pays for the roads is that it's fought on the wrong battlefield. There are two parts to the argument that "drivers pay for the roads and cyclists don't, so they shouldn't get to use them":

1. Drivers pay for the roads
2. Therefore cyclists have lesser rights to use roads

While I understand that #1 is easily proven false, I think debating it reinforces the wrong idea that common infrastructure and services "belong" to whoever's taxes funded them. The point that I think needs more refuting is #2 . It doesn't matter if drivers did pay 100% of the costs of roads. They are built for public use and the very idea of ownership of them by a particular class of people is morally wrong, antidemocratic, and at odds with core principles of a just and civilized society. It has been a long-term political trend to try and undermine the value of public works and the good that they do by being available to all people.

The very fact that we aren't offended first and foremost by the notion that it matters who pays for the roads tells me that the propaganda is working. I don't pay for roads, police, or public parks in other states. If I travel to a different state, would that mean I have less of a right to police protection or use of roads or parks?