I do pay taxes, just like a motorist might. Where do you live that you think your car or your gas is taxed in a way that contributes to road upkeep? In the US gas taxes haven't been upped in decades, roadways are maintained out of the common coffers (incl. large federal incentives which come straight out of your income tax payments).

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josephcsible 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> In the US gas taxes haven't been upped in decades

But the tax is still constantly being collected even though the rate isn't going up. This is like saying electricity must be free if you haven't had a rate hike in a while.

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MisterMower 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Because motorists don’t fund all road upkeep, cyclists who consume those very same roads are entitled to pay none of it? What exactly is your point?

For the record, I support closing that gap, in addition to taxing the odometer on electric vehicles which don’t contribute to gas tax revenue but use roadways like other motorists.

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Mawr 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Because motorists don’t fund all road upkeep, cyclists who consume those very same roads are entitled to pay none of it?

I don't think you understood what you wrote. Non-motorists subsidize motorists.

Feel free to look up the % of funding for roads that gas tax or w/e accounts for in your country.

Also look up the fourth power law, that'll tell you how much tax a cyclist should pay compared to a driver in terms of road wear. Say a cyclist should pay $1, how much should you?

Then check how many millions it costs to build a mile of highway and internalize the fact that cyclists are not allowed there. Nor do they use car parking. Nor do they cause 40 thousand deaths per year in the USA. What's the cost of human life again?

Once you figure all that out, we'll be ready to start talking about pollution and its effects.

	▲	MisterMower 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		More than half of the US doesn’t pay income taxes. Your point about non-motorists subsidizing motorists is nonsensical in this context. At least some of the taxes motorists pay are directly used for road maintenance. Roads deteriorate whether they’re used or not. If cyclists want to use them, they should pay to maintain them. I don’t know why you find this idea so controversial. Adjust the fees commensurate with their weight if you want, but by definition those fees should not be zero. Roads are obviously expensive, hence why it is repulsive that cyclists pay nothing to build or maintain them, but actively increase the danger on them and degrade the efficiency of using them. Pollution? In what world do cyclists not require fuel to operate? Cyclists use the most expensive fuel possible to operate: consumable calories. We burn fuel to operate machinery to produce food, then transport it to stores and then transport it home, cook it, and then use only a portion of the available calories to operate a bicycle because the human body isn’t 100% efficient. You’re delusional if you somehow think cycling is good for the environment.