Earlier this week, over at Slog, Erica dismantled Jim Vesely’s proposal that bikers pay a $25 bike license fee for bike lanes and trails. Vesely’s idea might make some sense if accommodating biking didn’t also benefit car owners, and more important, if bikers didn’t have to simultaneously pay taxes and levies to fund roads that are largely dedicated to cars.
As Erica correctly points out, car owners do benefit from bikes and bikers are helping subsidize car owners:
Every year, the US government spends more than $100 billion to subsidize driving above and beyond driver expenditures on gas taxes, vehicle purchases, and license plates.
Add on other shared costs related to cars—pollution, land use costs—and it’s hard to ignore that everyone, including those who don’t own cars, are subsidizing cars.
In turn, bikers shouldn’t be the only taxpayers to fund bike lanes.
I’m revisiting Vesely’s ignorant editorial a few days late because it’s hard to ignore another example that’s come up this week where the public—bikers included—are going to be paying for car owners: The Feds are about to commit $15 billion to bail out GM, Chrysler, and Ford.
I’m not saying bikers should be exempt from saving the auto industry, but as the kids say, I’m just sayin.
But as Erica correctly points out, car owners do benefit from bikes and bikers are helping subsidize car owners:
Every year, the US government spends more than $100 billion to subsidize driving above and beyond driver expenditures on gas taxes, vehicle purchases, and license plates.
———————-
What is the source for the $100 billion figure? (She doesn’t provide one from what I can see).
Step One: Don’t give a dime to the auto makers.
1 Yeah….$100 billion sounds way to small.
AF,
And while we’re going after subsidies, let’s kill the One Percent for “Art” and other boondoggles that discourage untalented people from getting real jobs.
Bicycle riders (bikers are something else again – think Sturgis, S.D.) should be forced to pay through the nose for all the trouble they cause, to wit:
(1) Ignoring stop lights and signs;
(2) Running down pedestrians on the Burke Gilman Trail;
(3) Having attitudes of smug superiority and superciliousness;
(4) Gross visual pollution on the most extreme magnitude – Just how much fat-assed Spadex can any one person endure???
Tax, fine, and levy them into oblivion…for the good of the community.
The Piper
re 5: I see your point, Piper. As if their rude behavior wasn’t enough, they wear outfits that Pee-Wee Herman wouldn’t be caught dead in. Visual and behavioral pollution is what it is!
Besides, with all the methane these spandex-clad, pointy-helmeted, vegetable-eating ‘tards expel, they should be taxed into oblivion.
Erica needs to get on her bike and ride.
you guys here need to get focused on new material of IMPORT – all the blather about the bike tax is hot air – not serious at all
geez, this blog used to be interesting
and rehashing the Stranger is not interesting, it is called REPEATING the same story
by the way – if riding a bike to work is the Holy Grail – what does always walking to work get
those who walk complain as much as the car drivers about the bad manners of the cycle riders, ask some of them
Cool down @8.
I thought my extra point about the proposed $15 billion bail out was a helpful, timely tidbit to show how pervasive (yet oddly unacknowledged) public support for cars actually is.
@1,
here’s the cite: http://www.earth-policy.org/Bo.....11_ss4.htm
@10 here’s the cite: http://www.earth-policy.org/Bo oks/Eco/EEch11_ss4.htm
————
Which in turn cites this reference:
22. Study cited in David Malin Roodman, Paying the Piper: Subsidies, Politics, and the Environment, Worldwatch Paper 133 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, December 1996), p. 9.
which itself sites another study that presumably came up with the number. The actual figure used is $111 billion (not $100 billion), but it’s at least 12 years old. There must be much more recent work – and data – available. Erica Barnett needs to do a little better homework.
ps Nonetheless, I’m completely sympathetic to the argument that this nation is far too auto-centric.
And the latest on the bailout shows a couple of wonderful concessions to the Bush admin – take the money from the 25bn “green” fund with no provision for replenishment AND strike the part that would have kept the automakers from using CA for tougher standards.
I have trouble not supporting some kind of package to save the jobs, but this gets ridiculous.
It’s ridiculous to bailout the automakers until you can answer the question:
“Who is going to buy all these cars they produce? For what price and how many units?”
We are waaaaaaaaay too focus on saving unprofitable jobs and executive salaries.
Trust me, Toyota, Honda & Nissan will pick up the production slack and create more highly productive jobs than Ford, GM & Chrylser.
I’m not asking bikers to pay for anything except the medical expenses (and pain & suffering) of the pedestrians they run over.
14 You got it Cyn. There are all kinds of things that contributed to Dee-troit’s current difficulties, but the primary factor at this point is that people aren’t buying what they’re building. Hand the Big Three a pile of money, no strings attached, and they’ll just keep doing the same thing until it runs out, and be back begging for more.
Just like the Goddamn banks are doing already.
P.S. @ 5
The sad thing is that there are plenty of laws on the books to deal with the problems, but cops don’t enforce ’em.
17,
They’ve got strip clubs to investigate for illegal lap dances. Can’t enforce traffic laws and do that at the same time.
Wow, Bikes? really?
I thought that the Viaduct was falling and the 520 bridge was sinking……at least that was the mantra back when Democrats needed to increase the gas tax…..Emergency!!!!!
But we are now talking about bikes….?
There are far greater trans problems to address than working out “who gets to ride their toys where”….
@15
Rog, I talked to my insurance guy today. My homeowners insurance covers me if I crash into a person or their car (I forgot to ask about rabbits, sorry). The same thing would apply with renters insurance, at least with my insurer.
I’m the first person that’s ever asked them about bikes crashing into things.
Piper @ 5 said:
I can endure that a little more than I can the image of an overweight, middle-aged bagpipe player in a skirt ;-)
re 14:
“Who is going to buy all these cars they produce? For what price and how many units?”
You have to pay workers a living wage so they can buy your product.
That was Henry Ford’s insight many years ago.
“Add the two together, and you get the true hourly compensation of Detroit’s unionized work force: roughly $55 an hour. … Honda’s or Toyota’s (nonunionized) workers … make in the neighborhood of $45 an hour, and most of the gap stems from their less generous benefits.”
http://economistsview.typepad.com/
22 $55 or $45 an hour–either way that’s pretty good money. How many of y’all out there get paid that much? The other half of Henry’s equation was to make cars that were inexpensive enough for the employees and everyone else to afford them. The Big Three can and do make some comparatively low-priced, fuel-efficient cars, but with their business model they hardly make any profit from them. Therefore they pour lots of resources into a gigantic marketing effort to convince each and every one of us that he or she can’t live without a brand spanking new, 500-horsepower, 15-ton, 2.5-mile-per-gallon, gold-plated (well, actually, gold-tinted plastic) monstrosity.
We’re not buying, anymore–some of us because we don’t want to, and more and more of us because we can’t.
Auto makers deserve no bailout. I am a biker and I also say as a biker they deserve a turd. The major problems with them are
1) Greedy CEOs
2) Unions who agitate for overpaid over benefits workers… Unions are as bad as the CEOs. Bullys who don’t necessarily represent the worker but have a right to take their money regardless..
Ummm.. headless lucy… I’ll cut you some slack for a change because I really think you tried to research the issue.
Even media morons says the unionized labor cost of the big three is $72/hr while non-unionized labor cost is $45/hr. Much larger spread than your “source”.
But you see – in 2007 worldwide, General Motors sold 9.37 million vehicles and lost $38.7 billion. Toyota sold 9.37 million vehicles and made $17.1 billion.
Hmmm…? Why would this bailout work?
Puddy & Witless Lucy,
Here is the straight scoop on the whole issue from Mark Perry, an econ and finance professor at U Mich:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/
Most of the content will be over your head, Lucy, but there are lots of purty peechurrs and more charts and stats than Puddy could ever want.
And here is something good for a laugh:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfw.....gthree.jpg
[accidental double-post]
It seems that both conservatives and liberals agree that a big-3 bailout is a bad idea. But yet it looks like it’s a done deal–go figure.
The marketurbanism.com link is very good, but something does not quite add up. The link says that 80-90% of road costs are covered by user fees from drivers, Yet the OP claims there is a $100 billion annual subsidy. Are we really spending (roughly) $1 trillion per year on roads in the U.S.? That does not sound right to me.