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Comment by gernb | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this isn't enough money but ... car users pay taxes on gasoline to maintain the roads. Cyclists pay nothing equivalent. Of course cyclists pay normal taxes like everyone else. It does raise the question of should their be a cycle tax. Cars will have a similar problem soon, as they go electric all over the world whatever taxes come from gas will disappear and governments will have to find a new way to pay for the roads.

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Cycling infrastructure costs far less. Road damage is roughly the square of the vehicle's weight. Also, we don't charge pedestrians for sidewalks.

> "Increasing a truck’s weight [from 80,000 pounds] to 90,000 pounds results in a 42 percent increase in road wear. Pavement designed to last 20 years wears out in seven." https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/06/22/murphys-law-how-trucks...

> It would take 700 trips by bicycle to equal the damage caused by one Smart Car. It would take 17,059 trips by bike to equal the damage caused by an average car. And it would take 364,520 bike trips to equal the damage caused by just one Hummer H2. https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

When this all comes together, every cycling trip I take is a car left parked and that benefits everybody. That's why we don't tax cyclists for infrastructure and why it's counter-productive to raise it as an issue.

I was under the impression it was proportional to the 4th power of a vehicle’s weight: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

But this might be measuring something a little different.

Regardless, in my city (Seattle), an asphalt bike path near me (Alki trail) is still in perfect condition after a decade of frequent cyclist and pedestrian use, and adjacent car streets are riddled with potholes and cracks despite frequent patching.

I wonder how this compares to areas that have freeze-thaw cycles. Bikes do a lot less damage to the path, but at the same time bikes and walkers are much more noticing of path damage.

The bike path near me was resurfaced recently, it wasn't bad before but it's certainly nicer now.

It's actually the fourth power over the weight of the axle, so almost all road wear is from very heavy heavy vehicles such as trucks and the like.

At least in the US gas taxes and usage fees don't come close to covering the cost of roads [1,2]. In the US all of us pay for roads through other taxes because the use fees and taxes don't cover the cost of the infrastructure.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-tortured-...

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/

> car users pay taxes on gasoline to maintain the roads.

True. But then it’s counter-productive, because it really does not cover government spending to build and maintain roads (and motorways, and bridges, and tunnels). To be fair, roads are necessary and useful in a modern economy. But the same money on some reliable tracks for freighter trains could be even better in some instances, and now we have people saying that we cannot have that because trains are expensive. True, they are, but the comparison is flawed because we assume that roads are free.

Indeed, gas taxes will have to decrease, and that will be associated with increased maintenance costs (EVs and modern cars keep getting heavier, which results in more wear and tear). So it’s possible that at some point people will realise how much the debate is stacked against any alternative form of transport, but I am not too hopeful. Roads are just expected; people don’t really realise they we had to pay for them.

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