Just to reply to myself instead of each post calling me dumb individually:

I said we all pay via general taxation, so yes you me everyone pays for roads if we use them or not. Vehicle users also pay in addition to general taxes the direct taxes for their usage in terms of road tax and fuel duties (N.b. that road usage fees per mile are on the cards for EVs). Cyclists pay none of these (unless they also own a car)

If there is a huge government subsidy for something, you'd be a fool to ignore it

I couldn't agree more, we should make sure cyclists and motorists pay their fair share.

1. The damage caused to a road surface is governed by the fourth power law [1]:

"This means that after 160,000 crossings, the bicycle causes as much damage as the car does when driving on the road only once. From this it can be deduced that a large part of the damage in the streets is caused by heavy motor vehicles compared to the damage caused by lighter vehicles."

2. Dedicated cycling infrastructure has the lowest cost of all vehicle infrastructure [2]:

"The annual infrastructure costs per traveller kilometre are 0.03 euros for bicycles, 0.10 euros for cars, 0.14 euros for buses, and 0.18 euros for trains."

3. The implication that whatever extra taxes motorists pay cover all externalities of driving, like death and injuries (40 000 deaths per year in the US alone) and health complications from brake dust and tire rubber seems laughably naive to me but perhaps there are some hard numbers that say otherwise?

I too yearn for the day motorists pay for the damage they cause.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

[2]: https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/rep...

In what way do cyclists require unique and expensive infrastructure that both isn't the consequence of interactions with cars and that wouldn't be covered by general taxation unless general taxation literally didn't pay for any infrastructure?

Maybe isolated recreational paved bike paths, needlessly expensive public lockup places, and smaller scale urban infrastructure to avoid accomodate only pedestrians and bikes in forward thinking places? If cars weren't so common, would cyclists require 8+ lane highways, or even relatively wide roads? Seems like we pay into a pool of infrastructure funding that is often already very expensive and that has little to do with cars, if they didn't exist we'd broadly be saving public money, both on direct and indirect costs such as pollution, deaths, traffic control devices, public policy, or accommodating the demands of everything but personal cars as necessary. They should be treated as an expensive luxury, which they should be, but in some cases they're a necessary burden that the poor should be releaved of.

If cars weren't default, EV or not, we'd all be like "who's going to pay for that!?"

Likewise with trains, we all pay for them with taxes, but the people who use them often pay directly for the continued operation in terms of what is not their personal obligation (maintenance, construction, staffing), usually a relatively marginal source of revenue, but it keeps it going. You pay for trains through general taxation, and you pay somehow for the continued operation of your personal vehicle, and so do bikes, but cars demand much more from external sources like trains do, and like trains, there's no free ride, unless you bike, which has relatively minimal external demands. You pay for the continuance of the operation of a uniquely burdensome private luxury, and it's not subsidizing anything.

Roads also open up some amount of significant economic commercial and personal opportunity, which should also be factored in, but also paid for like others. If it's a problematic amount, then you make different choices, and if that didn't balance out at a system level, we'd make different infrastructure choices.

Out of interest, where do you pay direct road taxes? (I've heard that some countries do this, but I don't know which ones).