You may have seen the letter to the Greenville News yesterday titled Vehicles, not bikes, pay for our roads (Google the article title if you are not a subscriber to see the full letter). The writer opened with the same old argument we have all heard before:
“Is anybody tired of all the whining and crying from the tight spandex and funny helmet crowd? All you ever hear from them is that “we have the same right to be on the road as cars do.” Wrong. There is no way they have that “right.” It is not a right; it is a privilege that I earned and pay for. I am required to carry insurance, passed a test and also pay a $20 a year road use fee. What do cyclists pay? Nothing!”
Of course we know that cyclists DO pay for the roads. Even though we ride bikes, most of us still own cars, carry insurance, and pay gas taxes. In addition, we ALL pay the income, sales, and property taxes that fund the majority of road construction and maintenance projects anyway. It is also worth noting that our lightweight ‘vehicles’ do NOT damage the roads the same way that heavy cars and trucks do. So if a cyclist pays for a road maintenance project through property tax, how exactly is he or she not paying a fair share?
I wrote a longer post in response to a very similar letter to the editor a couple years ago. I won’t repeat all the same points here, but I encourage you all to read that post. It is easy to write an angry letter without checking the facts, but I think the facts are clear. Cyclists do pay their share for the roads…and then some.
