As you probably know, Oregon passed a bicycle tax that will go into effect in the near future.
Oregon state legislature voted to slap a $15 surcharge on the purchase of bicycles that cost $200 or more.
This is not good policy, in fact as Jonathan Maus of BikePortland puts it, it's not even really about policy.
He thinks the motive behind the bike tax is emotional, not financial.
“This is like a culture war kind of thing,” Maus said.
There are a lot of times that people get fired up about fairness for fairness' sake (and certainly I get caught up in it at time). But sometimes "fairness" makes for bad policy. If you were on a plane without enough fuel to make it to land and someone had to bail out, you might draw straws, but you wouldn't let the one lady who can actually land the plane draw a straw. Is that fair? No, but it's good policy.
Of course in this case, the fairness holds up - or would if we hadn't already baked in so much unfairness to the benefit of drivers. Right now drivers pay a gasoline tax, but that tax is insufficient to cover the cost of roads and it certainly doesn't cover the cost of pollution, parking, crash damage and other negative externalities. We're subsidizing all of those costs for drivers - that's how we're paying our share (and then some).
If drivers were paying the full cost of all those things (which would require a gas tax around $1 a gallon) then it might be fair for cyclists to kick in some money for trails and bike lanes, but until then, it's not.
Unfortunately it appears that other states might follow suit.
On Wednesday, Colorado state Sen. Ray Scott, a Republican who is the assistant majority leader in the Colorado General Assembly, was pledging to follow Oregon’s trail, coloradopolitics.com reported.
I guess Republicans finally found a tax they like.
Anyway, I - like the rest of the biking community - am torn on this.
Pedal pushers were still trying to decide whether Oregon’s tax measure signaled a potentially positive development or a setback in the continuing culture clash between bikers and cars.
Positive as in, while nobody likes to pay any kind of tax, the surcharge at least suggests that maybe bicycling has become entrenched in the culture as a smart, ecological and healthy alternative to the car, whether for work or play.
Negative as in, this is a legislative slap from lawmakers who represent all those drivers who honk like crazy at the sight of a bicycle in their lane. It’s just another zing from the car culture that defiled the planet and despoiled people’s health, and collective payback for every bicycle that’s rolled through a stoplight without stopping.
But I probably agree more with Maus and League of American Bicyclist director Bill Nesper that this is a bad idea. It's done for a bad reason (to placate angry drivers) which rarely leads to good results. It will make cycling slightly less appealing. Is it enough to reduce BMT? I don't know, but we should be making biking cheaper and easier to reduce congestion, improve health, improve the environment, etc...
“Cycling is something we want as many people as possible to do,” Maus said. “The idea of basically putting what amounts to a sin tax on that behavior is really ridiculous.”
Earl Blumenauer disagrees, BTW
“I think this is a really great opportunity for the cycling community to take a step back and think about the bigger picture,” Blumenauer told the blog.
For more, the LAB has an excellent post on this.
The Oregon bike tax is not good policy. It is a sign that transportation investments are likely to remain tied to revenue sources rather than community preferences. It is a sign that transportation-related taxes are not seen as tools of broader public policies, but primarily as revenue sources for transportation investments. It is a sign that policymakers care more about ensuring that people who drive feel assured of their return on some of the lowest gas taxes in the world than about confronting the public health and environmental issues caused by prioritizing automotive infrastructure.
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