Month: December 2016

By JOE CORTRIGHT, The Atlantic
A report published earlier this year confirms, in tremendous detail, a very basic fact of transportation that’s widely disbelieved: Drivers don’t come close to paying for the costs of the roads they use. Published jointly by the Frontier Group and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Who Pays for Roads?” exposes the myth that drivers are covering what they’re using.
The report documents that the amount that road users pay through gas taxes now accounts for less than half of what’s spent to maintain and expand the road system. The resulting shortfall is made up from other sources of tax revenue at the state and local levels, generated by drivers and non-drivers alike. This subsidizing of car ownership costs the typical household about $1,100 per year—over and above the costs of gas taxes, tolls, and other user fees.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving-true-costs/412237/
[B’ Spokes: Or how I like to explain it, motoring taxes and fees basically pays for for the Interstates. You know, roads where bike and pedestrians are not allowed, roads with an “I” and some numbers. All other roads we all pay for, they are no more for “only cars” than your local park, school or library. Any way a good read and makes you wonder why we throw so much money after something that has so little benefit per cost.]

by Walker Angell, Streets mn
We hear frequent calls for more funding for bicycling — for painted bike lanes, door zone bike lanes, sharrows, protected bikeways, bicycle parking, giant motor traffic intersections for Trader Joe’s, programs to encourage people to ride and any number of things.
We don’t need all of that special funding. We may specifically not want that special funding.
Asking for funding for bicycle facilities is backwards. It’s inefficient, can result in poor or over-priced outcomes, and sometimes the funding can be sidetracked for projects that have little or nothing to do with making walking and bicycling better and safer.
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We need to think about it differently. Not as bicycle projects or pedestrian projects or people with disabilities projects or guardrail projects, but as one comprehensive transportation and space project. Mitigating the negative impacts imposed by motorists must be a core element of traffic engineering and of every roadway, not an optional add-on.
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When engineers design a bridge, they don’t use a painted line to keep cars from driving off and plunging to their death. NO! They design it from the outset to be safe. Can you imagine if bridges didn’t have guardrails and we had to fight for funding for them?
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Our response is that we’re going to spend 99% of our money making roads smoother and faster for drivers and 1% to improve safety for those endangered by the fast drivers. We protect people from falling icicles and from plunging off of high bridges but not from errant drivers? That’s messed up.
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Rather than start with funding, we should begin with what we should do — build safe roads — and then let the funding follow. If there is only enough funding available to reconstruct 22 miles of roadway to the new safer standards rather than the planned 25 miles of fast, smooth, and unsafe road, then that’s life. If a road cannot be built safe for all of those impacted then it should not be built or reconstructed or repaved.
[B’ Spokes: Or how I look at it, we can build those extra 3 miles next year. Over 90% of our projects have the sole purpose of solving so called problems 10 years down the road using inflated numbers and arguably incorrect cost benefits so really those 3 miles of car-centric roads can wait a year.]
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Do We Really Want Funding For Bicycle Projects?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2052657/opening-beijings-1000km-seventh-ring-road-more-closely
[B’ Spokes: The rate that China has embrased America’s love of cars along with all the down sides is scary. This article is about a road that is 12 times the size of Baltimore’s 82.8 km beltway. More cars and more roads is not the answer.]

by Dan Savage, The Portland Mercury
If a pedestrian jumped off a sidewalk, ran into the street, pulled a driver out of her car, and inflicted injuries so severe that the driver died moments later in the arms of a passing stranger…. that pedestrian would probably face more severe consequences than the driver who killed Erica Stark:
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[B’ Spokes: A better analogy would be if pedestrians were juggling chainsaws and the whoops I just killed someone (https://dearestdistrict5.blogspot.com/2016/04/everyone-plays-part-in-chainsaw-safety.html ). But I do think the author makes a good point, the so called war on cars does not result in cars death, only an inconvenience in parking and perhaps in travel time. On no! People spent a lot of money on a luxury item that is not living up to it’s potential like a bunch of spoiled brats. Totally ignoring the real reasons, cars were great when few had them and few drove but to design a city where everyone drives on infrastructure designed and funded by 1950 standard of one car per family. Now driving is a miserable experience, too many cars on the road, so the solution is more cars! Alright it’s more no or little accommodations for non driving so people are encouraged by threat of death to drive. And in the end, cars loose unless there is a war on cars and their over use. If cars are indeed are the luxury item people want, then they should welcome paying extra in taxes for first class accommodations while the rest of use make due with what’s not set aside for cars. What’s that, cars already too expensive so you want other people to help pay for your luxury? Hmm.]
https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2016/12/06/18730471/fatalities-in-the-war-on-cars-are-never-in-cars