Cyclists still aren't freeloaders

This has been discussed here before, but, since the claim that drivers pay for the roads and cyclists don't is so pervasive, it's worth repeating: cyclists more than pay for their fair share of the road. This is backed up in great detail by US-PIRG (United States Public Interest Research Group) in the latest version of their "Who Pays For Roads" report. Spoiler alert: not drivers. 

A 2014 analysis by Advocacy Advance of statewide transportation improvement programs (STIPs)—short-term, fiscally constrained plans of transportation projects required of states under federal law—found that less than 1.5 percent of all funds were programmed for bicycle, pedestrian or shared-use projects

Bicyclists and Pedestrians Already Pay for Most of the Roads they Use

As general taxpayers in their communities, people who walk and bike help pay for the maintenance of streets, which are predominantly dedicated to the storage and movement of motor vehicles.

The degree to which urban streets are dedicated to automobiles is illustrated by a 2014 analysis of the use of roadway space in San Francisco, one of the least auto-oriented cities in the United States. The study found that 71 percent of all paved road area within the city was devoted to general traffic lanes geared primarily toward the movement of cars. An additional 11 percent was devoted to freeways (which are automobile-only) and state highways, and 15 percent to on-street vehicle parking. Only 2.4 percent of street space was devoted to transit-only or bike-only lanes—this, in a city in which private automobiles account for fewer than half of all trips. Thus, a San Francisco resident who does not use a car would pay most of the levies that support the city roads while using only a tiny portion of that infrastructure.

Bicyclists and Pedestrians Impose Negligible Roadway Costs

Compared with automobiles and trucks, pedestrians and bicyclists impose little wear and tear on road surfaces.A general rule of thumb is that the damage a vehicle imposes on a road surface increases to the fourth power of axle weight—that is, a vehicle that weighs ten times as much per axle imposes ten thousand times as much roadway damage as a lighter vehicle. A 200-pound bicyclist with a 50-pound bike, therefore, will impose approximately 1/65,000th the roadway damage of a 4,000 pound car.

Bicyclists and pedestrians also take up little room on roads. A stationary pedestrian takes up one-80th of the space of a parked vehicle, and a bicycle one-20th of the space. Compared with a vehicle traveling 60 miles per hour, a pedestrian takes up one-250th of the space, a bicyclist one-100th of the space, and a bus passenger one-67th of the space.

Estimates of the external costs imposed by walking and biking validate the conclusion that it is inappropriate to charge bicyclists and pedestrians user fees. A 2009 analysis by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute estimated that the external cost of a mile of bicycling was less than a penny, while the cost imposed by a mile of walking was 0.2 cents—compared with external costs of driving of more than 29 cents per mile.

Even if people who bike and walk were to be charged fees based on the impacts of their behavior—something that has never been fully required of drivers—those fees would likely be so small as to be barely worth collecting.

All of this has been mentioned here or in the comments before, but it's nice to have some numbers here. More - and citations - can be found in the report. Bookmark it for your Washington Post-based comment arguments. 

Here is the 2011 version, for those who are interested. 

Comments

[Smedley Burkhart]

Thank you. Very telling, even in regard to mass transit. The cognitive distortions that automobile culture has imposed on us are staggering. If you added the unaccounted costs of damage to public goods (air, water, human health, etc.) and the opportunity costs of public investment in roads, that graph would look much worse.

[Atlas]

One small aspect to these analyses that I would be interested to see addressed would be how significantly road freight factors in. For example, I don't own a car, and I only use the bus or take a taxi a few times each month (at the most). But I order things online, and purchase/use goods locally that have been delivered via road freight. I'd assume that the cost I pay for these goods would reflect the cost of transport, and in turn, include the "gas tax" to a certain extent. In this way, I am "using" and "paying for" the federal highway system, however fractionally, on an almost daily basis.

I'd imagine this would be a bit challenging to quantify though

[washcycle]

In the report they do break out just freight trucks. But they don't cover their costs either. Once you get to 2nd order uses (the police, ambulances, freight) etc... it naturally gets more complicated.

[scoot]

Thank you for posting this. Haven't begun reading it yet, but this looks like exactly the type of analysis that we need our transportation policy makers to hear and to understand.

[SJE]

Is there any study on the number of nerdy scientists, analysts and policy wonks among cyclists? Its amazing how many analytical minds are on this blog.

[washcycle]

I don't know, but I believe the first time we see Hawking in the "Theory of Everything" he's riding a bike. Just saying...

[Smedley Burkhart]

Ah, but how fast is he going?

...and then there's the iconic picture of Einstein at Princeton.

[Adam]

"A 200-pound bicyclist with a 50-pound bike" isn't going to be getting anywhere anytime soon. Odd choice for an example.

[Crickey7]

"A 200-pound bicyclist with a 50-pound bike."

It's a standard unit of measurement, the Walmart biker.

[SJE]

if its a standard measurment it should be in SI:
The 90.8 kg cyclist on a 22.7kg bicycle, at room temperature and pressure, at G.

[SJE]

as to biking correlating with analytical thinking, in my general practice law firm, those with science degrees are more likely to ride bikes.