sdmc530

Well then that is different. Sorry NC I no longer care...…..

J/K this is just a dump IMO, this money will never build anything for cyclists.

pdlamb

I'd suggest you write or email the chambers of commerce in Boone, Blowing Rock, Elk Park, etc., and tell them that if this bill passes you'll do your recreational rides in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. Note how many times you rode in N.C. in the last few years, how much you spent in gas, lodging, and especially food (be generous with your estimate). Let them do the heavy work for you.

livedarklions

This article makes a good point to mention to NC drivers--the bill would make DMV even worse to deal with:

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/ne...-fee/925473034

DMV has its hands full dealing with cars.

rydabent

With all the crime going on, do you really want the police out issuing little Susie a ticket for not registering her side walk bike.

bakerjw

I pay property, sales and gas taxes. I am already paying for the roads and maintenance.

Fastfingaz

I do believe that they've already passed that law here in New Orleans,,,,,, only in Orleans Parish,,,,, that means county in the rest of the United States...

Milton Keynes

When bikes are outlawed, only outlaws will ride bikes.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bike is a good guy with a bike.
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my bike.
They can have my bike when they unclip it from my cold, dead feet.

The right to bear bikes:

WizardOfBoz

My point is merely this: Taxes should at least approximate utility received. That way, no one gets a free ride at another's expense.
Property taxes should pay for stuff related to the property.
The tax on gas should pay for the needs of cars and trucks using the road.
Income tax should pay for stuff that allows us to earn an income.

The tax on gas shouldn't pay for MUPs and bikelanes. Cyclists should. I would make the case that sales tax on the bike doesnt begin to pay for MUPs, bikelanes, police and EMT response for injured cyclists, etc.

If you make the point that property and income and sales tax are coopted by politicians to pay for stuff that has no bearing on anyone's well-being but their own, well, we agree.

ridelikeaturtle

Does anyone want to guess what is the current corporate - actually, what it /was/ for 2018 - tax rate in North Carolina?

3-effing-% !!! And they're gonna lower it to 2.5% for 2019! (Three cheers for the US Conservative idea of what is "tax reform"!) This is something you might like to question your local representatives about.

There's where you're coming up short in revenue for cycling infrastructure.

But hey, instead let's screw over cyclists for a tenner... because they can, makes for a good soundbite, etc.

Maelochs

We already have that "right." it is already mostly meaningless. This law would sell us the "right" we already have, and the $10 would simply go where all of our complaints go. As a person who is not limited by some idiot's definitions (NOT referring to @WizardOfBoz here, but to all the people who invent definitions and categories for the way people think, to further divide the populace and make it easy to fight and raise funds) , I agree wholeheartedly with users paying. And I also have the sense to look at the costs created. Bicycles do Zero road damage. A fleet of bicycles could ride the same paved road until the tectonic plates shifted and the continent disappeared into the crust.

Cars do damage, causing the road to flex on the bed. Trucks are devastating. The forces involved with even gigantic fat cyclists like myself are negligible. And also ... roads are paid out of the general fund because we all eat groceries, use electricity and the sewer system if there is one, get mail, get our trash hauled, send our kids to school, go to work ... in other words, roads are of benefit Generally, even to people who never leave their homes. Gas taxes etc. are ways to raise extra money ... not all of which goes to repairing roads.

But hey ... if we are going straight-up user fees, i am all for it. I do 3,00-5,000 miles per year and even with all the groceries i could ever haul, never weigh a quarter ton or exceed 40 mph. And I never cause gridlock. Let's work out a sliding scale of fiscal impact, and I will shell out my 32 cents a year for my portion of the road damage I do.

Now you are talking not $10 but Hundreds. Government contracts ... it will cost thousands just to create, announce, accept, and analyze bids for making all that stuff. Whole new agencies would need to be created to track all the new information---and with typical government efficiency, theft reports will probably be received a month after the theft, by which time the bike has a new owner--and the thieves would have removed the RFID card.

of course, removing the card would then be made a crime---and lots of legit cyclists will get busted for changing a seat post and forgetting to swap the card.

Also, as I mentioned above---there won't suddenly be more cops on the street to search for stolen bikes. Right now you can engrave IDs on your electronics, and register their serial numbers and all that, and unless they show up in a local pawn shop and the staff Chooses to check the current list, none of that matters. The stuff stolen in burglaries goes through a fence and out onto the market and Nobody cares because the time and money involved in tracking every stolen VCR (sorry, DVD player) would be astronomical, and the unit can be replaced for a hundred bucks.

No one will care about your stolen bike any more then than they do now. There will not be teams of cops in antenna-studded vans triangulating lost bike signals. If they find a bike that was reported stolen, you might get a phone call ... and the whole system will cost millions by the time every leech in the capitol attaches riders and amendments---and in the end the money will end up going to adding lanes or traffic signals outside new developments, and cyclists will be worse off.

scott967

I have registered 1 of 3 bike I've brought in. It's $15. In theory cops can confiscate a bike that doesn't have a registration sticker on the seat tube. I've never been stopped by a cop here for any reason. I did get turned away at the gate to Naval Station Pearl Harbor for not having a sticker once. That is what motivated me to register the 1/3 bikes I did get from the mainland. You do see in CL ads statements that a bike is papered. Like you say the normal enforcement is that LBS, Walmart, whoever, is required to complete the forms at point of sale and remit to the state.

It costs $5 to transfer a registration to new owner.

scott s.
.

Maelochs

What if .... roads cost more than was raised by gas taxes? Well, of course, you'd raise gas taxes ... check out how that is working in France.

And considering how much it costs it seems likely that taxing cyclists enough to pay just for painting,. let alone building, bike lanes, would be prohibitive. And as for building bike lanes ... how do we separate the cost of bike lanes from the cost of car lanes on a new road? Income tax is on earned income .... what does it pay for? Cops, firefighters, roads ... politicians. So why should a tax on fuel only pay for roads? After all, it is not a user-fee system. If ti were, only people who needed cops would pay for cops. Only people who had fires would pay for fire fighters.

See any problems there?

How about education? Why should my "property" taxes pay for education? I have no kids in the school system.

Also .... as was mentioned above, businesses frequently get Huge tax breaks .... supposedly because they "create jobs," but anyone who actually pays attention can see how infrequently that happens ... there is plenty of money and influence changing hands, but none of it is adding to tax revenues .... more like revolving door employment for legislators, or campaign support ... "you help us, and we will get you from the state house to congress ... where you can help us more ..."

Concepts are wonderful .... but the world is concrete, not conceptual. I am about sick and tired of being fed wonderful rhetoric about completely unreal and imaginary systems, while being vastly underserved for what i spend. I hear a lot about "Runn government like a business," but in reality, government has no competition, so it is NOT a business. I cannot influence the government by not buying its products. I cannot shop around for a government which provides more value for my dollar, or better customer service to address complaints.

I will Gladly pay taxes for services rendered. Can i get some service, please?

Anyway ... i don' want to get this thread moved. later.

OBoile

This guy is simply playing to his voter base. Bikes annoy drivers (the majority of voters) and anything that is environmentally friendly annoys republicans (the voters he needs to keep happy).

Sy Reene

Don't MUPs pay for themselves in taking commuters out of cars which damage roads requiring costly repair bills more more than bikes do?

Chris(NJ)

Don't cast such a large net. I'm very republican and guarantee I care for, and do more for, the environment than most democrats. Second, I'd be willing to bet that due to the location of where I live, I annoy more democratic drivers than republican. Riding in NJ is miserable.
I'll even go a little further. I recently worked for 6 weeks in TX and told everyone I knew that the drivers north of Houston were the most courteous drivers to cyclists I have ever encountered. Maybe got honked at 2x. Every driver either waited behind me when there was no bike lane/shoulder, moved into the left lane to pass, or the oncoming lane to pass. I left there with a new appreciation for how they treated cyclists and I have ridden in CA, SD, WY, CO, CT, NJ, NY, PA, DE, MD, VA and NC.

Anyway, to not entirely derail the thread. I remember having to do this as a kid. Always went down to the police station to register the bike if the LBS didn't do it upon purchase.

Flip Flop Rider

bought my NC fishing license yesterday (I live in SC). $38 bucks up from last years $36 bucks and the year before that $30 bucks. SC license is $10 bucks

Doubt this bike thing will pass but for sure NC is in your pocket a good bit more than SC is

Retro Grouch 

That was my first thought too.

I-Like-To-Bike

Probably not; the number of commuters in the U.S. who switch their mode of travel from motor vehicle to bicycle due to the presence of MUP(s) (somewhere) along the commuter route probably amounts to an insignificant slice of the commuting population. In a dense urban area like NYC more than likely the bicycling commuter would be switching from public transit, rather than an auto commute.

WizardOfBoz

Nice. Systems thinking. I like it. As above, you'd have to show that MUPs cause drivers to switch to cycles, but I would think that the prospect of a relatively safe MUP vs a dangerous road would do that in some cases. Also: how much does a car damage a road over a year?

On the other hand, cycling uses no fuel, so you decrease the fuel tax revenue used for road maintenance.

tcs

We talk of build & maintaining roads and bridges. Under an equitable user fees model, here's an additional consideration: somewhere between 50% and 85% (estimates vary) of law enforcement in the USA is dedicated to motor vehicle traffic matters. To the extent that your local police, county sheriff & constables and your state's department of public safety are not self funding, motor vehicle operators should be covering that portion solely expended on their activities. Likewise, any public hospital & emergency care should in part be funded by some sort of motor vehicle taxation.

BTW, 'gas' taxes as a means to pay for motor vehicle user needs are increasingly problematic. Example: the driver of a Corolla pays ~50% more gas tax than the driver of a Prius for pretty much the same benefits. The Leaf driver pays no gas taxes at all. Hmm.

Caveat: at the extreme, a 'user fees' model would turn citizens into serfs, bound to the land and required to buy permission from their government to move about. Surely there's some minimum level of travel access a free society needs to provide to allow 'pursuit' of happiness (IMHO a bridge, tunnel, etc. that does not provide safe passage for anything but motor vehicles fails this standard.)

tcs

Fun fact: beginning in 1917 in the USA, excise taxes were charged on bicycle tires. This was done under the same formula as the taxes imposed at the same time on automotive and truck tires, i.e., by weight of tire (I'm not making this up.) In a 1983 tax overhaul, it was pointed out that 1) it cost substantially more to collect the bicycle tire tax than the revenue the tax brought in, and 2) none of the hypothetical money collected had ever been spent on bicycle accommodation or specific facilities anyway. Over the objections of national bicycle advocacy groups, this tax was eliminated.

WizardOfBoz

Interesting discussion - thanks. On your last point, I disagree. The cost of roads and stuff have to be paid. The citizenry pays for it, whether by income or property or use (gas, tolls) taxes. If one could find a non-intrusive way to assign taxation based upon use (for example, a yearly tax on each car owned, or per mile driven) this would be no more intrusive or "serf-inducing" than now I think. I mean, I'm with you on being suspicious of the government monitoring and controlling us. Look at China: they're actually using DNA to track folks in a specific Muslim population (the Uighurs) to ensure that they can put them into reeducation camps to rid them of religious belief. Not to mention murdering Christians. So, yeah, controlling your movement within the country would be a first step towards a technocratic authoritarianism. You could do this with a high gas tax (or, let gas prices skyrocket).

On your other points, I think we agree. Gas taxes could be one aspect of user-fees. Own a car? Pay a yearly fee to support road repair and police and EMT support. Could be based on a standard fee, or based upon mileage.

I'm not really wedded to this, it was just spit-ballin' around the idea that folks who benefit from something should pay for it, and folks who don't use it shouldn't be too burdened by taxes for it.

On one point we do agree: good public roads and highways make for an efficient economy. Dwight Eisenhower realized this when he saw the autobahns in Germany, which is why he pushed for our national highway system.

But again, I'm speculatin'. I will repeat: I don't think that legislator's proposing a 10 dollar tax on bikes is solely grounds for campaigning against the guy.

DeceptivelySlow

Thanks for info; I will keep an eye out for it.

tcs

Uh, yeah, well, I was imagining a reductio ad absurdum of a specific user fee before you could walk from your front step to the store, paying for the creation and maintenance of sidewalks and compensate the government for the ongoing loss of tax revenue due to taking the land used for sidewalks off the tax roles. Even under a user fee model, I believe some minimum level of free movement needs to be provided for out of general revenue. Airbus 380s need to pay their own way; Amish buggies not so much; draw the line in between.

TimothyH

This is the right approach rather than wringing hands or arguing about it on forums that no representative will ever see.

Organize a polite and courteous protest ride to the state capitol or past Representative Jeffrey Elmore's home. Make sure the media knows about the protest ride.

Call the newspapers. Make sure the media knows that this discriminates against poor people who ride bikes to work.

Show up at the state house in Spandex. Walk into your reps office in cleats and ask to speak to the representative.

Act up. Make a noise.

Remember that complaining and arguing here doesn't do anything.


-Tim-