Comment 100674

By LOL_all_over_again (registered) | Posted April 27, 2014 at 22:51:00

The direct cost of car ownership does not pay for the cost of roads.

The indirect costs of car ownership pay for roads and a whole lot more. Automobiles, their manufacture, usage and maintenance is a huge industry. Perhaps the biggest in North America. Every level of government gets bucket loads of taxes from so many different levels and areas that they literally fight over themselves to attract anything car related.

The direct and indirect costs of bike ownership don't amount to squat. If every penny that bicycles contributed to the GDP where eliminated nobody except the most diligent of accountants would ever notice. Bikes are a fun thing that kids and a very, very few adults use as means of transportation. Lots of adults have bikes and ride them 3 or 4 times a year. Very few adults use them as a regular mode of transportation. I know, I know that in other countries things are different but not here. Some cyclist reading this is already starting to rail about how the Netherlands are so wonderful for cyclists and how terrific their cycling infrastructure is. That infrastructure is so terrific because of the huge number of cyclists not the other way round. It's all about cause and effect boys and girls.

The fact that cars contribute such a huge amount of money to the public coffers gives the car and its use some pretty special rights, and rightfully so. I am a big proponent of the contributors having a say in how the money is spent. As soon as cycling starts contributing their fair share then they can have a say in how the money is spent. Maybe less than 0.1% of the budget is spent on cycling infrastructure but that is still way more than the cycling industry contributes to the tax coffers, in other words cycling is already getting MORE than its fair share.

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