The Bike Wars Are Over, and the Bikes Won

I give these such a wide berth that most motorists realise that I'm blatantly avoiding such a lane and rarely give me grief. I assume they can see why!

I am curious do you guys typically have showers at work ?

One of the reason I don't bike to work is that we don't have showers at work. Most of days in this part of US are hot and humid and I don't feel like sitting at work drenched in sweat.

Thankfully, I live in a rural area which means there are tons of standard roads that are very unpopulated, but even then... "sharing" a road between a 2-ton metal cage and anything else is terrifying for anything but the automobile (2-ton metal cage).

The common criticism though, is that biking in the US is much harder logistically. Many people commute for over an hour at 60mph+ to get to work. This would be implausible on a bike.

Really depends on where you are. Freeways are emphatically not for anything but high-speed vehicles.

I also almost got hit head on by a vehicle that decided to use the bike path (it was segregated) to overtake. It wasn't some huge highway either, it was the main street through a village, a few hundred meters from a stop light.

So I guess I probably was unlucky, but I probably would have died if I hadn't swerved over into the grass between the street and path, so the experience sticks with me.

Roads are made for human beings.

Where did this idea come from that we should build infrastructure for our inanimate property, anyway? Roads are for humans, however humans choose to use them.

Sadly involving a new license/tax on something involves government overhead that hopefully wouldn't be more than the tax they are collecting (or deter people from choosing a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to driving).

"Road use tax" isn't actually a thing, nor is it exclusive to car drivers - roads are paid for via the same taxes as everything else. Sales tax, income tax and property tax, distributed according to local, state, and federal budgets.

Cyclists pay their share of the taxes that build roads via sales tax, income tax, and property tax, same as everyone else does.

Most cyclists also own cars, and have paid all the relevant fees.

Pick whichever argument you like the best.

Just off the top of my head:

They don't cost enough (like cars) to have a reasonable bottle neck on purchase.

A slogged DMV would never agree to add 4x the customers by adding bicycle licenses.

safety stats: 30,000 people were killed last year in the states in car related incidents. 700 people on bikes in same were killed in car related collisions. No one (as far as I find) is killed when they're hit by a bicycle.

Drivers double-park their cars on them. They also open their car doors without checking to see if bike riders are coming first. They also swerve in and out of them while texting. They also drive onto them to get around vehicles like garbage trucks, often without looking. Drivers make turns without looking both ways, often putting us at risk.

I ride my bike to work every single day in New York. Every week, I have multiple close calls because of careless drivers, and sometimes because of careless pedestrians. I don't run red lights, and I don't even ride that fast. I ride my bike on the correct side of the street. You want me to pay extra taxes for what, exactly? My bike and myself combined are a little over 200lbs. Do I create potholes in the roads? Does my bike cause pollution?

I don't think you ride a bike.

As for the plates, similar explanation. We don't need a plate on humans, as usually identification can be done ín-situ if required.

On top of that, you want to reinforce the use of bikes, and not reduce it. Increasing bureaucracy for bikes will not help at all.

The potential property damage and/or physical injury (not to mention general wear and tear upon roadways) that a bicycle can produce is minuscule in comparison to the potential destructive power of the automobile. Much of the legal justification for registration/licensing and taxation of vehicles is born from these factors.

Bike riders also pay taxes because they usually are able to actually live in the city where they work and ride their bike, so they're more likely to be paying property tax to the city, sales taxes to local merchants, actually being around on the evenings and weekends to patronize local business etc, instead of just commuting in during the day, creating traffic and then leaving the place a ghost town after 5pm.

In the UK cyclists have an equal voice because the highways exist for them to use just as they exist for pedestrians, horse riders and motorists. This is enshrined in law so is a statutory right.

Trivia fact: The cost of construction and upkeep of "motorways" (roads dedicated to motor vehicle traffic) outstrips the total income from VED year-on-year. In the UK, if you use a bicycle but never a car, you are subsidising motor travel.

The change came with the automobile, which has huge mass and travels at high speed. The danger of the automobile to all other road users was so profound and unique that the need to license motor vehicles soon became quite clear. And even with driver licensing, cars kill thousands of people every year.

Bicycles simply do not pose much of a threat to other road users, that would require cyclist licensing.

Similarly, a 250-lb cyclist does not cause much wear and tear on the roads compared to a 2,500-lb motorist. Roads are more expensive because they have to be built for cars.

Well, property taxes pay for specific-use auto lanes even if one doesn't own a car, and nobody seems to mind that (well I do, but I'm weird).

That being said, I would be THRILLED to pay for tolled bike lanes that were kept free of cars and other threats.

I pay my city $40 a year for the privilege of owning a car and living here. That's barely enough to cover salting in the winter.

The rest of my city's road expense comes entirely from property tax and sales tax. So why add a tax for bikers?

These figures are from 2010: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-...