Comment 120499

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted December 02, 2016 at 10:46:00

The worst part of all this is the myth that cyclists don't pay their share of the cost of building and maintaining roads, even though municipal roads are paid for primarily out of property taxes that every cyclists pays!

Provincial and federal road infrastructure is partially funded by special motorist-associated taxes, but they don't cover the full cost (and cyclists can't even use the freeways that are a major part of provincial and federal spending on roads).

And, of course, the road space and wear and tear cyclists impose on roads is a tiny fraction of what a motorist uses. So, as Ryan says, someone who mostly cycles is vastly over-paying, not underpaying (and they pay the road costs for trucking the goods they consume since the cost of taxes and fees is passed on to the end consumer).

Even more blatant, the City of Hamilton does not even receive any of the license fee money to spend on its roads (it is spent on Provincial roads)! Why did Terry Whitehead even bring up licensing when the City doesn't receive any license fee money from the Province?

What would a bicycle license cost?

In Ontario a motor vehicle costs $120 to license, while a moped costs $12 (one tenth). Based on this, it would be extremely unfair to charge more than about $6 or so for a bicycle, even if you thought licensing bikes was a good idea. Clearly this would generate essentially no useful amount of revenue after the costs of administration and enforcement were included!

There is no example of a jurisdiction using bike licensing as a way to generate significant amounts of revenue to spend on cycling infrastructure. The few places that do have bike licensing use it as a way to discourage theft and recover lost or stolen bikes.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2016-12-02 10:54:04

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