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Oregon Passes First Statewide Bicycle Tax In Nation (washingtontimes.com)
turkeydance writes: In Oregon, a state known for its avid bicycling culture, the state legislature's approval of the first bike tax in the nation has fallen flat with riders. Democratic Gov. Kate Brown is expected to sign the sweeping $5.3 billion transportation package, which includes a $15 excise tax on the sale of bicycles costing more than $200 with a wheel diameter of at least 26 inches. Even though the funding has been earmarked for improvements that will benefit cyclists, the tax has managed to irk both anti-tax Republicans and environmentally conscious bikers. The bike tax is aimed at raising $1.2 million per year in order to improve and expand paths and trails for bicyclists and pedestrians. Supporters point out that Oregon has no sales tax, which means buyers won't be dinged twice for their new wheels.
Obviously an initiative being pushed by bike shops in neighboring states.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
$15 per limb at time of purchase
Will $1.2M even pay for the administrative overhead for the state to collect and disburse the money?
When I buy gasoline for my car, I pay a tax which is used for the construction and upkeep of roads. I also pay a fee when I register my vehicle each year which goes to the same purpose. Bicycles don't consume gasoline, nor does one pay a registration fee, yet it does cost money to build and maintain bike paths. Yes, bicycles are more environmentally friendly and their use should be encouraged, but there are costs to supporting cyclists other than air pollution. Why shouldn't bicyclers pay their fair share?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
$15 per limb at time of birth, $60. Spiders have 8 legs, so they pay $120.
You can buy a Keep Oregon Weird bumper sticker.
So what you need to do is build better facilities (bike paths, etc) to separate cyclist traffic from vehicle traffic. Everyone benefits in that scenario, whereas discouraging cyclists means bot more traffic congestion and more competition for parking spaces. After all, even you state that the problem is too many bikes on the roads, not too many bikes per se. (and yes, it's spelled "per se", not "per say")
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Compared to the same number of people in a car, they're WONDERFUL for the environment.
The average bus has 7 passengers. Two people in a car use less fuel per passenger-mile, and the car doesn't obstruct traffic, doesn't need a paid driver, and gets people where they need to go much sooner.
Only lefties ride bikes? The rider I talk to most is a hard core right-winger leaving California as soon as he retires so he can shoot his guns without the damn government meddling in his business.
Adult tricycles. With an aging population, it's not a bad idea. Also recumbent 4-wheel pedal-powered quadracycles. Or make them look like Fred Flintstone cars. You can have more than one person peddling. Yabba-dabba-do!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Sell them with no wheels. Wheels sold separately.
rewriting history since 2109
Compared to the same number of people in a car, they're WONDERFUL for the environment.
No they're not. A single bus causes more wear and tear on the road than thousands of cars combined.
The problem is not cars, the problem is gas emissions. Once that problem is solved properly, the world of mass transit will be disrupted as things like urban sprawl will become a solution rather than a concern.
lucm, indeed.
If it continues to move you tax it more! Once all activity stops, the tax rate is correct ;)
;)
A majority of all funds paid for transportation at all levels of government is just diverted to other stuff and has been for years. It is just the politicians and bureaucrats bonus slush fund. Last year they patched pot holes in front of my house and I got a special assessment
and the money will end up going to everything but new bike paths. A good 1/3 of it will be eaten up in paychecks and benefits for what ever little office that will suddenly triple in size because of the new money. That and the money will end up only in pet projects near the homes of the most powerful rather than in "best bang for your buck" projects that will actually be useful to the public at large.
Only if you're comparing full buses to empty cars. If you're comparing practical bus energy use to practical car energy use per passenger mile, Buses seem to be slightly worse, and I'm not sure it's clear that the miles themselves are equivalent - Cars go where you want them to, Buses go where the Buses go, so a trip by bus might require more miles.
Buses: 3,829 (Btu per passenger-mile)
Cars: 3,122 (Btu per passenger-mile)
Rail: 2,445 (Btu per passenger-mile)
Oak Ridge Transportation Energy Data Book - Table 2.16
My assumption is that buses are probably still reducing congestion, but in order to make use of them, there need to be enough off-peak buses that the overall ridership is not that great. I'm also gonna assume that self-driving minibuses and municipal cars could cut the off-peak energy use side of the equation.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Anti-tax Republicans and Environmentally conscious bikers? Whose going to put on their fundraiser? Martha Stewart and Dan Barber
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Compared to the same number of people in a car, they're WONDERFUL for the environment.
The average bus has 7 passengers. Two people in a car use less fuel per passenger-mile, and the car doesn't obstruct traffic, doesn't need a paid driver, and gets people where they need to go much sooner.
Using a bus as an example you have to consider its size and the number of passengers it can hold. You also have to consider the fee (ie. the fare) and the convenience or inconvenience of a commuting via bus.
Now let's look at a car which is normally a very convenient form of transport. Obviously, we have to consider the overall economy of the car which takes into account the purchase price of the car, its maintenance, and fuel. Even an electric car requires fuel since you do pay for your electrical use one way or an other. Now consider the number of people a car can take (average is normally five) but take a look at the number of cars and average out the number of people per car and the answer will come out at just over one person per car.
If you are a commuter, a car can be very convenient but you also have to take into account crowded roads or even lack of them and then you have to consider parking fees (great if your place of work provides free parking) which can increase the over commuting costs considerably.
Why not look at trains? These can move the most people relatively cheaply although they are not as convenient as a bus or car since they only run on tracks while a bus (most of them) have routes which can be changed (ie. Road Works, Detours etc) if required.
Now to bicycles. Obviously, these are a cheap form of transport if the road infrastructure and the terrain support them but you don't have very much protection from the elements and other forms of transport if involved in an altercation with other vehicles on the road. Bicycles are also relatively slow but are great for short distances and maintenance costs are very low. They are also a great form of exercise. You can even add motor bikes although running costs will increase and like bicycles, you don't have all that much protection from the elements and any altercation but they are safer than a bicycle.
We should also look at walking. This is great exercise but only for short distances unless time is not taken into consideration.
These are also other forms of transport such as ferries (fine if your city has wide rivers and not enough bridges), trams (think a bus on a train track), taxies (can get expensive over longer distances), helicopters (very expensive and very limited) and planes (great for very long or intercontinental distances).
Which is best for you? Well "it depends".
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Most V8's have a roof to keep out the rain and cold, A/C to keep out the heat, don't require helmets or other safety gear and generally sacrifice themselves to save the occupants in a crash. They can also carry 100's of kg of luggage and 4+ people.
and not because we want to shave the whales. It's a regressive tax. Oregon needed more money and they couldn't get it from the rich in the form of income tax so they're getting it from the poor by taxing bikes. The $200 limit is obviously an attempt to blunt the worst effects on the poor (you can get a decent used commuter for under that) but it'll still hurt some.
The left want progressive taxation. This is regressive.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A single bus causes more wear and tear on the road than thousands of cars combined.
Citations please. I call utter bullshit.
but if everybody drove busses wouldn't the traffic be worse?
This is a non-issue.
Will the poor be affected? Not really; the law only applies to new bicycles, and the poor buy used. There is a massive economy in secondhand bicycles; I am a dozen blocks from a secondhand bicycle shop, not because I happen to live in a particular neighborhood, but because it's hard not to be a dozen blocks from a secondhand bicycle shop in the Willamette Valley.
Is this an unfair amount? Well, the same law in the same package also applies a tax to new motor vehicles, and it's 0.5% of retail price. A $20k car comes with a tax of $100. Nobody seems to be complaining about that!
I suspect that bicyclists are irritated that this tax is brand-new, smells like a sales tax, doesn't exist anywhere else, and seems disproportionate. I'd like to remind them that the extensive and amazing bicycle paths that cities like Eugene and Portland have are not free for the cities to maintain.
Make sure to read the law; it starts at page 187 of https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Downloads/ProposedAmendment/12431
~ C.
simple solution add to the cost of gasoline! Joke aside, it would push more people into biking making state healthier!
The problem is not cars, the problem is gas emissions.
Nope, the problem is cars. Your average car requires around 10m2 of land just to sit idle. Once that car moves, it needs at least another 30m2+ for safe operation. Multiple that by 10 million people in a large city and it simply does not scale. Buses, trains, bicycles, walking, pretty much every other mode of transport is much more efficient. So you are 100% wrong, the problem is exactly cars.
Road damage goes by the 4th power of the axle weight. Increase the axle weight by 5.6 times, you get 1000 times as much damage.
A quick Google shows that 30,000 lbs seems a reasonable weight for a bus, on two axles *at best* you are at 15,000 per axle. For the bus to be less than 1000 times as damaging as the average car, the average car would have to have an axle weight of almost 2700 lbs. No way that's average.
So, yeah, a bus really *does* cause damage equivalent to thousands of cars.
http://www.pavementinteractive...
Take that lefties. What goes around comes around.
As a bicycling lefty, I don't mind a bit. I spend $15 a week on lattes alone (as required by our stereotype-fulfillment contract), and a new bike is likely going to run me somewhere between $1000 and $4000 anyway, so if adding another $15 to the price tag of a once-every-10-years purchase gets me safer and more pleasant bike routes to ride on, I'm all for it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
By definition (confirmed by observation), taxes disincentivize activity. In an age where cyclists are literally saving the planet, a tax on them, discouraging their use, is patently absurd.
Fuck those assholes.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
This is an utterly stupid way of building general use infrastructure right up there with toll roads. I know people love the idea of why should I pay for someone else benefit, without realising that they directly benefit as others do.
A cyclist on a cycle path is a car not contributing to the traffic jam I'm stuck in. Same with toll roads. When 80000 cars drive through a toll road it means 80000 less cars in the way of the people who don't pay the toll.
There's a reason infrastructure is built from pooled taxes. The user pays system is a great way to achieve very little.
No. Because it is compulsory, which violates my freedom. If that poor kid stole or robbed me of $1, you would've agreed, however reluctantly, that he should not have. But, for some bizarre reason, when the government does it — takes $10 at gunpoint to give the kid $1 — it is Ok and "the price of civilization".
It is my money. If you believe, you need it more than I do, you can ask — politely — for my help. But you can not just come and take it — such confiscations are only permissible to finance defence from foreign enemies and domestic criminals.
If there aren't enough people to pay for it voluntarily, then it does not need to be built at all. Simple, eh?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
so if adding another $15 to the price tag of a once-every-10-years purchase gets me safer and more pleasant bike routes to ride on, I'm all for it.
If it did, that would be a great deal, but it won't. They'll just blow the money on something else and then they'll have a bond issue or a tax on something (probably raising property taxes, knowing Oregon) to actually raise money for bike lanes. Are you new?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bikes don't obstruct buses.
Bikes obstruct smaller vehicles than buses all day, every day, especially in California where cyclists aren't required to even use their bike lanes, and where motorists are required to give them three feet of space and are otherwise at fault in a collision no matter how stupid the cyclist is acting, and how little disregard for traffic they are displaying. What causes you to imagine that they wouldn't obstruct buses?
If anything we need a law that requires buses be in a bus lane if one is available.
Bus lanes are garbage, they waste space because they are even less utilized than the buses themselves. They're about the only thing actually worse than taking a lane away from cars and giving it to bicycles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Last I checked roads are public, those bikes have a right to be there as much as you do.
So why do they have to act like they have more of a right to be there than I do? Why don't they get over into the middle of their special lane, like I am legally required to do? (I already know the answer, they might get a puncture! boo hoo! I don't get to swerve into a cyclist because I'm dodgin' a pinecone.) Why do I have to give them three feet of extra space, just in case they fall off their bike or swerve into my lane? Why is it that if I obstruct traffic in my car I'll get a ticket, but the law explicitly instructs them to obstruct traffic in some ways, and they tend to ignore all the ways in which they aren't — like say pulling over when there are five or more people stacked up behind you on a freeway, at the earliest safe opportunity. For a bicycle that is almost anywhere. Here in California we have a bunch of twisty little highways through the trees and I've been stacked up behind a cyclist repeatedly on such roads.
Cyclists want to cry about how cars take up all the space, then they want to take up more space than they need before they even dry their tears. Wake me up when they have some integrity, I'll start listening.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Excise taxes only pay a small portion of the costs of the automobile
From http://www.frontiergroup.org/r... infrastructure.
Roads don’t pay for themselves.
Nearly as much of the cost of building and maintaining highways now comes from general taxes such as income and sales taxes (plus additional federal debt) as comes from gasoline taxes or other “user fees” on drivers. General taxes accounted for $69 billion of highway spending in 2012.
Roads pay for themselves less and less over time. In the 1960s and early 1970s, gas taxes and other fees on drivers covered more than 70 percent of the costs of highway construction and maintenance. The share of transportation costs covered by gasoline taxes is likely to continue to decline as a result of inflation, more fuel-efficient cars, and slower growth in driving.
All of us bear the costs of roads.
Aside from gas taxes and individuals’ expenditures for their own driving, U.S. households bear on average an additional burden of more than $1,100 per year in taxes and other costs imposed by driving. Including:
An estimated $597 per U.S. household per year in general tax revenue dedicated to road construction and repair.
Between $199 and $675 per household per year in additional tax subsidies for driving, such as the sales tax exemption for gasoline purchases in many states and the federal income tax exclusion for commuter parking benefits.
An estimated $216 per year in government expenditures made necessary by vehicle crashes, not counting additional, uncompensated damages to victims and property.
Approximately $93 to $360 per household in costs related to air pollution-induced health damage.
Governments spend more non-user tax dollars on highways than on transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail travel, combined.
Transit ($43.3 billion in government capital and operating funding), bicycling and pedestrian programs ($821 million in federal funding), and passenger rail ($1.8 billion in government funding) all receive less direct taxpayer support than highways.
People who walk and bicycle pay their fair share for use of the transportation system.
Most walking and bicycling takes place on local streets and roads that are primarily paid for through property taxes and other general local taxes.
Walking and bicycling inflict virtually no damage on roads and streets, and take up only a tiny fraction of the road space occupied by vehicles. Bicyclists and pedestrians likely pay far more in general taxes to facilitate the use of local roads and streets by drivers than they receive in benefits from state and federal infrastructure investment paid for through the gas tax.
Americans lead increasingly multi-modal lives. Most are not “drivers” or “non-drivers” but people who use a variety of modes and pay for transportation in a variety of ways.
Roughly two-thirds of American drivers also bicycle, walk or use public transit during the course of a given week, with young people more likely to be multimodal than older generations.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe it is appropriate to use gasoline tax revenue to support public transportation. And several recent opinion polls suggest that Americans believe that the nation should give greater priority to transit, bicycling and walking in transportation spending.
They donating billions of dollars of their money to their own (and each other's) charitable foundations.
If they believed in Government, they'd simply stop arranging their affairs--including their donations to charity and especially donations to charities they control--so as to avoid and minimizes taxes paid.
In giving to their foundations, they are bypassing potential estate taxes later. The Government could have used that money.
In giving to their foundations, they are offsetting current income taxes with deductions for their giving. The Government could have used that money. At one point Warren Buffett had $30B of carry-over charitable donations. He will be using that to offset his income taxes for the rest of his life.
In giving to their foundations, they are donating appreciated stock. That is, they are giving away stock that was given to, paid to, and/or bought by them long ago at pennies on the dollar relative to current stock prices. I've no idea about the actual values, but for sake of illustration, let's say thatg 20 years ago Bill Gates was granted options for 1M shared of Microsoft at $1/share, now valued at $100/share (didn't check, don't care it just for illustration purposes). In stock option payments, he would have paid income taxes on the difference between the option price ($1) and the market price at exercise, say $2. So in effect he was given $2M in stock, for which he paid $1M, so there's a tax liability on the $1M difference. So he paid that and holds the stock to today and it's worth $100M (in my illustration, ignoring possible splits, etc.). If he sold that stock to fund his foundation, he'd have to pay capital gains taxes on $98M in gains. But if he gives the appreciated shares to his foundation, he saves taxes three ways. First, he doesn't pay the CG taxes. Second, he claims a deduction for the full $100M of giving. Finally, that $100M is no longer in his estate, and he's therefore bypassed estate taxes.
If Mr Buffett and Mr Gates believed in the effectiveness of government over the effectiveness of private charities, they'd stop doing these things and let the government get their full tax cut. Instead, both of these men work feverishly in their avoidance of taxes (perfectly legal avoidance). Further they do so completely ignoring the irony of their simultaneous cries for higher taxes.
Good for you! I lived in Shanghai for 6 years (Qibao town area), and met my wife there. We lived in a big, 80 sq meter apartment. Now we live back in the US, and she and I both greatly prefer having a nice, 220 sq meter house, a nice big backyard, and space around. So do all her friends and family when they come over to visit... Do not conflate "accepting" with "preferring"...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It seems to me that you have no experience living somewhere with a functioning bus network
Those bus networks are heavily subsidized and lose money in every case, because (again) physics. That's written off as a necessary cost, but it's only necessary because we use buses, which we only do because we need drivers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, the Space Shuttle was public too, but it doesn't mean you had a right to ride into space on it. A better example is that the Interstate system is also public, and bikes are typically prohibited from using them. So, while you probably have a logical argument for using the roads, you're not expressing it in any kind of logical manner.
Just another day in Paradise