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Making "protected" bike lanes safe



 
 
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  #111  
Old April 16th 19, 03:36 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
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Default Making "protected" bike lanes safe

On Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 4:20:53 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 14 Apr 2019 13:21:54 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/14/2019 10:53 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, April 13, 2019 at 5:49:56 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Saturday, April 13, 2019 at 9:36:08 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, April 12, 2019 at 10:44:36 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On Fri, 12 Apr 2019 20:04:00 -0700 (PDT), "

Frank said MOST road construction is not funded by the gas tax. A very simple search on Google easily confirms this. I found only about 30% of road construction is paid by federal and state gas taxes combined.

The question is "what percentage of roads are funded by non-vehicle
related taxes and fees?"

See https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/. So in
California, 38.2% of road spending is paid for by taxes unrelated to the
vehicle, i.e. income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes.


In California and nationally, the vast majority of road construction costs ARE paid by federal, state and local gas tax, registration, weight-mile tax and similar vehicle-related taxes.
-- Jay Beattie.

To say I am skeptical of what Jay wrote is an understatement. I stand by my assertion that a majority of road funding is paid from other sources. Such as general income taxes. Not gas or motor vehicle related fees. I did a simple Google search and found the following.

Federal fuel taxes raised $36.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2016
State fuel taxes raise money too. On average state fuel tax is 31 cents per gallon. Federal is 18.4 cents per gallon. So all states raise $61..3 billion from fuel taxes. Total federal and state is $97.7 billion. Lets round that to $100.
California's 2019 budget is $190 billion and 7.5% goes to Transportation. Or $14.25 billion. Transportation might include trains and airplanes too. And all the administrative costs too. But I bet a vast majority of all the Transportation department's costs are spent on roads one way or another. Lets say $10 billion.

Now I said 30% of roads were paid by the fuel tax and 70% from other sources, such as income taxes. Jay said a VAST majority of road costs were paid by the fuel tax and other vehicle costs/taxes. I think VAST is at least 75%. About the opposite of what I said. So lets split the difference and say 50%.

I am excluding all the "other" costs Jay mentioned. No one has given an accurate or even inaccurate estimate of what all these "other" costs amount to. Or even what these "other" costs are. Are boat registration fees part of this "other"? Toll road fees? Parking tickets fines collected by the cops? Speeding tickets? How much are car registration fees in each state compared to their fuel tax costs?

So we have California with $10 billion road costs. And total all USA federal and state fuel taxes of $100 billion. So to pay for ALL of California's road costs it takes 10% of ALL federal and state fuel costs. To pay for only Half California it takes 5%. There are 50 states. California is 2% of this total. Does California get 5% of all federal fuel taxes to only pay for half its costs? I don't know how federal fuel taxes are allocated to all the 50 states. Population, miles of road, political favor? But I doubt California gets 5% of all federal fuel taxes to pay for only Half of its road transportation costs.

Based on these numbers, I'd say my statement that road costs are paid from other sources besides fuel and/or any transportation costs is far closer to the truth than Jay's claim that the VAST majority of California (and all states) road costs are paid from fuel and other transportation costs.

Oregon example: https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/About/Pa...n-Funding.aspx

Roadway funding and transportation funding use a different mix of revenue sources. https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/Planning...ng-Sources.pdf And to slice the pie even finer, different roads use a different mix -- state, county, local, etc. The oldest paved downtown streets in Portland were paved by the adjacent business owners, like an early LID. The road to my house was built by a developer in the 1940s. I know his family -- they're trying to mow-down the forest nextdoor. http://www.livablepdx.com/ (my neighbors -- my wife and I missed the picture).

Outside of urban renewal districts, private development and other specially designated areas, roads are funded with mostly vehicle-related taxes and charges. Here are some Oregon pie charts:
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/ci...sportation.pdf California is pretty similar, although it has a lot more diversity in terms of programs and funding.


First, I said most road construction is not funded by the gas tax. John
challenged that by saying the "gas tax does go to support highways." A
clever inversion, but not a rebuttal of my statement.


I'm not sure that is exactly right as working from memory now ( a
rather shaky scheme at my age) I thought I was pointing out that gas
tax was used in support of roads, if not for the actual construction.

The discussion since then has broadened to include other (motor vehicle)
user fees. Jay is saying "mostly vehicle related taxes and charges." But
I talked specifically about gas tax.

And while I'm not a tax attorney (as I just proved while working on my
IRS forms), it seems the percentage of road construction covered by gas
tax varies considerably from state to state, and doubtlessly from road
to road within a state. Here's one source:
https://taxfoundation.org/statelocal...-separated-out

Note that the chart is including all highway costs, not just the
construction costs I mentioned. But the percentage paid by those taxes
and fees goes as low as 2% in Alaska. The article claims the national
average is 24%. (There may be other estimates from other sources, but
these are the sorts of things I've read in the past.)

Let's recall that this tempest-in-a-teapot initiated when John said "We
had a discussion fairly recently about bicycles paying road tax
and the group was solidly against it - buy a bike and use the roads
free?" The implication was that cyclists are not paying their way - that
they are somehow a burden on other taxpayers. It's flat wrong in more
than one way.


O.K. perhaps I was a bit injudicious in the use of words but
certainly, as in this post (above), as soon as "as tax" and "roads"
are mentioned together a number of folk leap into the fray, as it
were, to prove that the gas tax isn't used to build roads, or that
road costs also come from other sources as well as the gas tax, or,
or, or.

All of which seems to me to be just additional proof that bicycle
advocates will argue vehemently again any thought that all uses of
the public highways and byways should pay for it, or perhaps, more to
the point, that bicycles being somehow "God's Chosen Few" deserving to
ride free of all costs, ignoring all rules (my friend is the sheriff)
or even consideration of their own safety.

--
cheers,

John B.


Roads are built for the use of cars and trucks. The wear of all of the bicycle traffic is far less than the actual wear from weathering, let alone the impact of high density auto traffic. So charging bicycles to use the roads is foul play.
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  #112  
Old April 16th 19, 07:01 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default Making "protected" bike lanes safe

On 4/16/2019 10:36 AM, wrote:
The wear of all of the bicycle traffic is far less than the actual wear from weathering...


Good point.

--
- Frank Krygowski
 




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