I was enjoying an all-too-rare hour of listening to Jason Lewis the other day.
I was driving through the teller line at the bank, when he chimed in with an oldie but goodie: “Bikers don’t pay taxes”.
And the teller looked at me, perplexed, when I shouted “you are wrong for two reasons!”.
First: I do pay taxes. City and county taxes. Some of which go to paying for bike lanes – the odd strip of asphalt around the lakes, and a stripe lane on the occasional street. Not every street mind you; one street about every mile or so, generally, usually not the high-traffic ones. (And by the way – Minneapolis’ re-work of Hennepin and First Avenue North, putting the bike lane between the parking lane and the curb? Reekingly stupid. It smacks of equal parts revenue generation plan and green-über-alles arrogance). While there may or may not be state transportation dollars mixed in there, I most certainly do pay taxes for them.
Now – in their infinite wisdom, the powers that be decided not to make bike paths a user-fee-based system, paid for by tolls or bike licenses or whatever. Got any ideas? I’m down with ’em – although we all know it’ll just mean more property tax revenues for government to spend. But that’s a larger problem on which we all agree.
Second (ironically, inasmuch as I was in a car when I thought this): Like 99% or more of bikers, I pay gas taxes. I drive. Six months or so a year, though, I commute by bike (as well as all sorts of recreational riding). For longer trips, or trips where I have to haul groceries, I drive.
And you can ask any engineer, but five five-mile trips cause more road damage than one 25-mile trip; the longer trip is likely to be on the highways (which my gas taxes pay for), with fewer starts and stops and turns, the kind of thing that wears down roads. So since a higher percentage of my gas-tax-generating car travel is longer, more efficient, less-damaging trips, while for half the year most of my short-hop trips cause no damage to roads at all (because I”m on a bike!), the state taxpayer is actually getting less damage per gas tax dollar out of me, the driver who bikes a lot, than out of someone who drives all of the equivalent mileage.
By the way – while I drive, I buy less gas – which means less demand pressure on the market, which lowers the price for the rest of you.
On all counts, you’re welcome.
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