jefnvk

In Michigan, anything after 1983 or so is registered on the model sticker cost, not weight. I'd imagine there are a few bikes that could rack up hefty licensing costs

rekmeyata

The bicycle tax would be a one time fee and not a annual fee like motorists pay for registration.

Roughstuff

Good to hear about the excise tax thing with axles and weight....i am only familiar with axles being important for highway tolls etc (which is why you see trucks with axles suspended in some cases where/when the load is light.) It does remain a problem for the tax to be at the right level, but that is always an argument about any tax. If Colorado-ans ( ? ) don't feel their state is spending their moneys effectively, more power to lower taxes at each and any level...income, excise, sales tax, whatever.

I still support complete repeal of the gas tax. Improved energy efficiency and the arrival of non-gasoline ruled vehicles means with each passing day the quantity of fuel burned has less and less of a relationship to road presence and wear. The gas tax is many times larger than the profit margins for the oil companies which provide it to us, and it is their investments in new technologies and exploration which has slashed the price of gasoline (and other fuels such as heating fuel and diesel fuel) to such remarkable lows.

Roughstuff

Joey so fat people would pay more? I always thought this should be done for airline baggage fees. I pay god-knows-what for 5 or ten pounds over on my luggage because of bicycle tools or whatever....but the 350 pound cow I sat next to in economy brings only a bag of chocolate as a carryon and pays nothing extra.

cyccommute 

Wisconsin's proposed "sales" tax is the only proposal I've ever seen that was a one time tax. All of the other proposals I've seen...and we have had a few introduced here in Colorado...have been an annual fee. Most of them use about $25 per bicycle since that would be enough to cover the cost of the program and provide a small revenue stream. In all honest, the $40 per year I pay on my motor vehicle probably doesn't cover the cost of issuing the tag.

cyccommute 

Frankly, we don't need lower taxes here in Colorado. The goofy tax structure we have now is starving the state of much needed revenue to maintain and repair our current roadways. Another rock fall in Glennwood Canyon could shut down I-70 for months instead of just weeks as happen this spring.

I think you are missing the point. The improved efficiency of vehicles and the increased use (perhaps) of electric vehicles won't help the problems states and the US have with our roads. We have increased wear and tear on the roadways because of the increased number of vehicles and less money to pay for the necessary repairs. Colorado, like the US, hasn't raised the tax rate on gasoline since 1992 and it currently sits at the same $0.22 per gallon for the state's portion and $0.18 per gallon for the fed's portion. When combined, the revenue stream only pays for about 1/3 of the cost of vehicle operation. The other 2/3 comes out of the general fund and is usually at the expense of both higher education and public schools. At least in Colorado, we don't care how ignorant our children are as long as we can drive on our roads. We can't really because they are in poor repair but we haven't had any bridges collapse...yet!

As for the gas tax being many times larger than the profit margins of oil companies, that is stretching the truth quite a bit. Only about $0.80 of the current $2.50 per gallon price of gasoline is due taxes and fees. The cost of the crude oil is about $1.50 per gallon. There are some costs due to distribution and refining but there are profits built into those as well. Oil companies aren't losing any money even when the price per barrel of petroleum is at the current stunningly low levels. They are making a lot of profit on the other parts of the oil that they refine which has to be figured into the equation as well.

KD5NRH

It's not the taxpayers' fault that the state got crappy rocks and left them above the roads. Disassemble the politicians and sell their organs for money to stabilize or remove the rocks.



So $2.5-1.5 raw material cost leaves $1, and $0.8 of that is going to tax, leaving a grand total of $0.2 to cover refining and transport costs. That would make tax at least four times the possible profit if the oil companies were using slave labor to smuggle the fuel for free.

rekmeyata

I would strongly disagree with a annual fee, a one time fee at purchase is all that is really needed to supplement path and lane construction, anything beyond that is simply a ploy to get money to divert it to other resources, or use whatever current taxes that pay for bike projects to be turned completely off and use only annual fee.

In Indiana my average car tag cost $65, I have a quite a few cars too, but even at $40 that would more than pay for a 5 cent tag plus bulk government mail postage. Just go to your states BMV or DMV or whatever it's called in WI and look up the annual revenue there and I think you'll be surprised. The question becomes is that money enough to pay for new roads and repair of current roads? If not, at some point down the road, as more and more cities are doing like where I live in Fort Wayne are approving wheel tax which is a city road tax added on the cost of the state tag fee. Which I don't think is a very good thing to do because I think government wastes too much of our taxes on paying very high amounts of money on labor because they have to pay a higher fixed hourly wage than what they could pay if they open both labor and materials for bid, in addition to that materials used today is crappy compare to what they use to use. Around here where I live they'll blacktop a road and within 2 years it's already a mess, or they'll concrete a road and in one year it's being patched. I remember living in Ohio and they would blacktop a road and it was good for 10 years at least, or a concrete hwy that was good for at least 20 years, not anymore. So we're spending a lot of money on fixing and redoing roads that don't last as long as they once did. They'll do stupid things around here too like dig up a road to replace a gas line, but leave the old water main behind, repave the road, then 3 months later dig it back up to replace the water main, repave, then 3 months later tear all back up again to replace the sewer line! I've watched this city do that over and over and over again all over this city, why in the hell wouldn't you just replace that stuff the first time when the road was all dug up when you knew those other pipes were old and decaying? I guess it's job security, either that or some sort of payoff to the mayor.

Roughstuff

It is a good point about fees. When the Mass Turnpike was built after WWII, they calculated the "Net Present Value (Cost)" of the project would be recouped completely by 1974 or so (Which it was) and after that the toll plazas would be removed. Of course they weren't...and even now, 40 years later, we have merely replaced them with electronic toll collection (which IS a great step forward). I am agnostic on keeping the tolls (there are solid arguments on both sides) but I just thought i'd point it out.

RidesaJapanese

My former hometown of St. Joe, MO, has recently put in a lot of biking infrastructure. Along the entire winding boulevard system they built a wide jogging/walking/biking path. There are also "sharrow" signs painted along the connecting roads, and when they redid St. Joe Ave in the north end they put bike lanes between the driving lane and the parking edge (think door zone, but still an A for trying). Last week I finally loaded up my Trek and trailer and took my daughter down there, we did 7 miles round trip (in the 90's, heat wave here, or I'd done the whole thing) I thought it was really great. Now, does all this infrastructure get much use? According to the people that love to bash cyclists, no. (I'm sure the McDonald's being built there that will have all you can eat French fries will see a lot more use.) And maybe the whole bike infrastructure was part of the good old boy corruption that plagues that city, and lined someones pocket, I still think it's pretty freaking awesome though.

cyccommute 

Falling rocks is a fact of life when you live in a state that has been heaved forward the heavens. Paying to repair when those rocks seek lower ground is also a fact of life. For Colorado, the politicians aren't the ones who tied their own hands when it comes to having starved the state for revenues, the voters did it to us. In 1992 we put the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights in place which really screwed up the system.

At the retail level, the profit per gallon is only about $0.20 per gallon. But the real money is being made at the wholesale level. Take out the $0.8 per gallon in taxes and the $0.20 retail profit and you are left with $1.50 to $2.00 (at current prices) as wholesale of which some is production costs but the bulk is profit for the drillers and refiners. Don't cry too much for the oil companies, they are quite profitable.

cyccommute 

Like I said above, the Wisconsin proposal is the only one that I've ever seen that proposed a one time fee. Most all the other proposals I've seen are a steep per bike annual fee.

If a license tag was only a 5 cent cost and a stamp, then, yes, $40 would be more than enough to pay for it but there is a whole lot more involved in issuing a license plate or a license tag than just the sticker you put on your car once a year. First, your car's title needs to be produced and recorded. Sure that is done only once and at the time of purchase but this takes time at the DMV because they have to confirm that the car is the one you purchased and the one that was sold. Then the system has to track your vehicle so that the license tag can be issued long before the license expires. Then, when you send in your payment, the account has to be reconciled, recorded and the tag issued.

For a single car, this might be only a small amount of work but state DMVs have to do this for millions of vehicles each year. Most of the system is automated someone has to keep the automation moving and fix problems as they arise. Add in people who are late in payment, mistakes in the title work, lost paperwork, etc. and it's rather amazing that the system works as well as it does.

First, you are conflating your Department of Motor Vehicles, which is usually a division of your state's Department of Revenue, with the Department of Transportation which is often a stand alone department in most states. One is responsible for bringing the money in and the other is responsible for using the money for the good of the public. Second, labor costs are almost always the greater part of anything we humans do. I work for a government contractor and material costs in our projects are actually quite small compared to the labor costs. Most of the money that governments and companies outlay goes to pay someone to make a widget. The widget doesn't cost much.

As for the quality of the workmanship, there are lots and lots of factors that you aren't considering when it comes to the state of our roads. First, how much traffic doesn't the road experience? Because we are basing our taxes on the amount of fuel used, the amount of money available for repair and maintenance has been reduced. We, as a society, ask that more be done with less. When have you every really gotten more for less?

We are also using a lot more salt on the roads so that we don't have to plow the roads. Salt degrade the road surface for a number of reasons. Salt is corrosive to some of the materials used to make up the road. Salt also ensures that liquid water is flowing at temperatures that they normally would flow at. Liquid water penetrates the surfaces and then, when the temperature drops low enough to freeze even salt water, the water expands and cracks the surface. With the extra corrosion, the water has more places to penetrate.

As for the subsurface infrastructure, each line under the road is maintained by a separate group of people who may communicate but probably don't. The sewer guys don't tell the gas line guys when they are going to tear up the road in a certain area nor do the water line guys tell the gas line guys when they are fixing their pipes. And the road guys probably don't tell anyone that they are repaving so that the repairs to subsurface infrastructure can be fixed...not that those agencies have the money to proactively fix their pipes anyway.

And how would you react if someone came to you and said we're going close 15 miles of road for 3 months while we replace the water lines, sewer lines, gas lines, power lines, phone lines, etc. I doubt you, or anyone, would be happy about the prospect.

Finally, there is the cost. Americans have no idea how much a road costs to build and maintain. For a normal 2 lane road, it costs just about $1 million per mile to construct a road. It costs about $100,000 per year per mile to maintain that highway. We want to pay nothing for that road but expect it to be perfect...and complain loudly if it isn't!

KD5NRH

You mean "vomited up by the earth."

I'm sure they have a mechanism in place for you to pay as much extra as you feel would be fair. Go for it.

rekmeyata

Your per mile dollar figure to build a 2 lane road is way under actual average which is in reality 2 to 3 million per mile in a rural area, in urban areas that figure almost doubles; 4 lane construction is 4 to 6 mil in rural areas and almost doubles in urban areas. How Much Does It Cost To Build A Mile Of Road? - Midwest

And as far as closing a road for 3 months to replace stuff...ok so they closed the road for a month to fix the sewer, then they closed the road for a month to fix the main, then they closed the road for a month to fix the gas...hmmm by golly that's 3 months. But part of the time they spent keeping the road closed was due to tearing up the street and repaving it 3 TIMES, which means instead of closing the road for 3 months it may have only been closed for 2 months since they wouldn't had to tear up and rebuild and repave the road 2 more times. Not to mention the cost of the labor and materials to tear it 2 additional times. As far as telling anyone in different departments is just crazy talk, the city knew that the mains and gas lines were old, they have mains breaking and gas lines leaking all over the city because they're all about 75 years old. Sorry but you're out on that one.

I'm totally aware of salt use and the freeze and thaw cycle, I also know they've used salt for years, and years ago the roads lasted longer. So what's changed? They are not building the general roads to take heavy truck traffic like they use to, so they put signs up saying that trucks can't use that road unless local delivery, except it's not enforced and heavy trucks just keep using the roads which in turn tears it up faster. The Europeans have all the same issues we do except their roads lasts longer, why? because like we use to do they still make their roadbeds thicker, more durable roadbeds, and they use concrete instead of blacktop. Chicago learned it's lesson from very expensive maintenance issues they had on their roads so when the rebuilt the Dan Ryan Expressway they went from 12 inches to 24 inches of aggregate to 24 inches, they went from 5 inches of asphalt to 6 inches, then they went from 10 to 14 inches of concrete, this means the old highway was 27 inches deep total to the new one being 44 inches. Sure it cost a lot more to build it this way but it will last about at least twice as long with freeze and thaw cycles and salt; the minimum life of this road is 30 years vs 15 to 20 maximum, with expectations from the engineers that it will last 40 years. But even with making that highway like that they still didn't put in 2,000 year old technology that the Romans invented to save their roads where, like us, they built the roads slanted to allow water to run off, but unlike us they put a lot more drains in that ran the water off into narrow canals alongside the road that carried the water away from the road and the underlying road foundation, for the most part our roads may allow the water to run off but it sets on the side of the road draining down through the dirt and under the road. Even some of the Roman bridges are still carrying modern vehicle traffic to this day, and we can't get a bridge to last more than 70 years not alone 2,000 plus years.

We may be asking for more to be done with less problem is there too many Indian Chiefs getting paid big Chief salaries that are either highly redundant or not even necessary. We have to have a manager overseeing a manager who oversees another manager who must oversee a supervisor who oversees another supervisor, it's like taking a mirror and aim it into another mirror and image is reflected many times, do we need that many of the same thing? NO!

But all that you said is spoken like a true government subsidized worker, but you did admit one thing correctly, labor cost is huge which is why labor cost along with material cost should all be up for bid instead of prevailing wages being fixed. Of course your argument against that will be that they'll have workers getting paid $3 an hour because that was the low bid, which is absurd because no one will work for that kind of money, and if no one works than the job doesn't get started, so the wages will always be reasonable for skilled labor in the area they are working.

KD5NRH

I'll go you one better on government idiocy with roads; they recently dug out some of the silting in the drainage ditch in front of my office. Four day project, requiring a big backhoe and two dump trucks in rotation to haul off the dirt.

One day the backhoe was down for repairs. The two dump trucks showed up at 7:30, sat idling on the roadside until lunch time when they took turns going to lunch and refueling, then sat there until 5:30.

To top it off, when the backhoe came out the next day, rather than starting back where they'd left off two days before, they started where they would have been if they'd actually been digging the day before, so there's a long untouched section right in the middle of their project, making it all completely useless.

tandempower

By biking for transportation you get more for less. By spending more for more lanes/roads for more motor-vehicles, you ultimately get less for more because land is being wasted as the overall quality of life in an area is being degraded and replaced with GDP growth to fund all the distractions needed to keep the people happy as their area is degenerating into a vast, paved grid.

Solution: keep certain roads in good condition BY reducing the total quantity of motor-traffic BY increasing the use of non-motorized transportation and transit.

tandempower

The less they do with these large machines, the more is left intact. Until automotive culture begins to subside, every construction project is little more than one step further in destroying the planet.

Unfortunately, by paying themselves to waste time, they are building up funding to pay for their personal automotive habits, which ultimately comes back as more funding for more automotive infrastructure projects.

tandempower

Taxes should be used to discourage certain activities and encourage others. More road tolls and rush-hour permits would discourage driving and thereby encourage the choice to use alternative modes. Those other modes would seem more affordable in light of increased driving expenses.

This relative-affordability effect would be undermined if taxes and fees are also being tacked onto those other modes, such as biking.

KD5NRH

"Destroying" the planet is what it would take to even double the number of bike commuters. The damn thing wasn't leveled worth a crap in initial construction, and it's shifted a lot since then, so most people are going to look at a quarter mile of 4% grade, go home and get the car.

Heck, until they put in the MUP along the river to provide a more gradual climb out of the park, even people who just lived a few blocks away wouldn't bike there because it was so hard to get out. This is the only way out that doesn't dump onto a shoulderless 35mph street. https://www.google.com/maps/@32.2177...7i13312!8i6656

CB HI

Interesting, so taxes should be based on your view of the world. What if taxes were based on the majority view? Lets say we use the current majority view that cyclist slow motorist down, after which the motorist must accelerate back up to speed. This uses up more gas, therefore cyclist should be taxed more because of the gas they force motorist to waste.

Great idea, right.

Using taxes to force ideology is never a good thing.

tandempower

In areas where slopes make transportation biking tedious, there are other ways to reduce the need for motorways. The biggest hurdle is getting people to acknowledge that the dominant form of transportation, i.e personal automobile, has caused a destructive trend due to its infrastructure needs and is therefore unsustainable and thus in need of reduction.



There's no such thing as 'the majority view.' There is majority behavior but not enough unity of mind to have such a thing as a majority view. Regardless, the view you describe that cyclists should be taxed to pay for motorists to slow down would be unfair because it would fail to tax all the motorists for causing each other to slow down during congestion, for stop lights, and every other delay caused by driving being widespread instead of it being an elite form of transportation.

Face it, motorists are their own worst enemy; not transportation cyclists.

rekmeyata

The lunacy of that sort of thing revolves around a weird little thing about government projects, if you are called to a job site and you arrive and the other part of the job workers do not show up due to some sort of problem or cannot perform the task due to some sort of problem then the you get paid for the whole day as long as you stay there, or do a job related task like refueling, so you get to nap, read a book, be on the internet, etc, all on the taxpayers dime.

I had a neighbor once who worked for Kern County in California as part of the road crew, he would have to be at work and clock in at 7:00am, then they would have a meeting, coffee, donuts, and put whatever tools and or equipment they needed into the truck, that all took about an hour, then they would fuel the trucks and drive to location which Kern was a very large county and sometime they could be driving for an hour, once they got there it was time for break for 15 minutes, by then it was around 9am, they would work till 11:30am then take a 1/2 hour lunch, work till 2pm take a 15 minute break, clean up the work site and leave it around 2:30 to 2:45, drive back to the headquarters, take 15 minutes or so cleaning up the truck and leave by 4pm so as not to get paid for overtime...but they did get paid for undertime! He loved his job and would admit that he would only actually work from anywhere between 4 1/2 hours to as much as 6 hours if they didn't have to go far from home, but the county would rotate workers so one crew would have to go further out one day and another stayed close, then the next day the other crew that stayed close yesterday goes out far, so on and so forth so everyone took turns at having an easy day.

rekmeyata

Degenerating into a vast paved grid? No, it's not degenerating, its regenerating job growth, and where there is job growth there is money being spent by those workers back into the economy which in turn generates tax money.

Your solution is in a perfect world where everyone lives a mile or two from work but we don't, the average commute in America is 15 miles which very few people will undertake on a bike not to mention bad weather. And transit which is either bus or a lot more rail, are ALL subsidized by taxpayers, yes those of you who commute by car must pay for a big bus to pick up a dozen or so people along a 5 mile or so route all day long because there aren't enough riders to pay for the fuel, maintenance, and salaries, so grants are applied for and given by the federal government so that cities can beat their chests and say LOOK this city is so great, we have bus transit. And rail transit makes less money than bus transit does. In addition to all of that buses don't go down every single neighborhood, so you would to find where a bus route is which could be several miles from your home, and then the bus could drop you off several miles from work, So your solution falls flat on it's face in America.

tandempower

Degeneracy can generate spending, job growth, and tax money. In fact, the only things that don't cause money to flow are the things people don't need to spend any money on because they are capable of doing them for themselves. Walking and biking are examples of such things, which is why undermining them as useful transportation generates more dependency and thus spending.

Make no mistake that this is a form of degeneration, in the same way that if you lost your hand and needed a prosthetic hand to replace it, your body would have degenerated by losing the limb but the prosthetic would have generated spending, jobs, and tax money. Nevertheless, it's better to retain a hand instead of replacing it with a prosthetic, if possible, and likewise it is better to retain the ability to walk, bike, and/or otherwise live car-free, if possible.

The sad thing is how many people share your opinion that car-free transportation is absolutely not worth striving for and so, presumably, they want those of us who do strive for it to give in to total driving-dependency and be slaves to the automotive economy they consider mandatory.

Whenever someone uses the word, 'face,' such as in the phrase, "flat on its face," or describes something as a "slap in the face," I can tell they are putting too much emotion and personal passion into their writing, which is likely to lead to bickering. What you should do, if you want to argue against LCF in an LCF forum, is use a respectful tone instead of using an inflammatory tone. I think there are plenty of people who will respectfully debate you here, but it's just miserable when it degenerates into emotional bickering.

That said, you can't say that the automotive economy isn't subsidized just because it's private. The fact that it's a near monopoly means that we pay the cost of everyone driving and all the roads they drive on as an added expense in everything we pay for. You could compare it with shopping at two identical stores where one store is located in a very upscale building that costs a lot and the other is located in a low-cost building. In the upscale building, the store has to pay its rent so that cost is going to have to be built into the prices it charges. Likewise, if the building costs less, the portion of the prices allotted to paying the rent will be less. Similarly, if a smaller fraction of the population drove, multilane roads could be reduced to two lanes, and there could be less of them. This would mean lower total infrastructural costs to be borne by businesses, which would mean lower prices, etc.

Now the problem with your post is that it references two conflicting fiscal positions. First, you say that economic activity that costs more (i.e. driving) is better because it generates more spending, jobs, and tax money. Then you say that public transit is bad even though public spending on it also generates jobs, spending, and tax money. So I think you should choose either fiscal conservatism or liberalism. Personally, I favor fiscal conservatism, which is why I favor reducing infrastructure spending by reducing driving as a mode of transportation, not to mention the possibility of slowing down inflation by making life possible for most people with less spending because they don't have to pay for driving expenses.

Now if you one of these fiscal liberals who abhors conservatives because they don't support maximum job-creation, growth, tax revenues, etc. then you're probably on the right track to decry LCF because all the automotive spending and sprawl-infrastructure spending creates lots of jobs and revenues for contractors, which stimulates the larger economy as it circulates. Nevertheless, you should note that as all this money is circulating and the banks are giving out loans to demolish natural land and replace it with buildings and parking lots, the planet is indeed degenerating - in the exact same way a patient degenerates as his or her body gets gradually replaced by prosthetics whose high cost is generating lots of jobs, revenues, and tax money.

So choose your position on degeneracy-driven spending, but realize that degeneracy has consequences for those stuck living in the degenerated area. This is true whether that area is a prosthetically 'enhanced' body or a city 'enhanced' to facilitate sprawling motor-traffic in all directions.

CB HI

^^Clueless!