When the city and state slash an arterial road through a quiet residential area — taking sidewalks, tree plats, sometimes parts of the front yard, and eliminating on-street parking in long-established Main Street type neighborhood shopping areas — mitigation of those impacts should most certainly be part of the cost of the project. And if the road is constructed using Highway Trust Fund money, gasoline taxes should bear their share of the cost.
My longstanding response when things get feisty is to suggest to suburban commuters that we should eliminate eminent domain and stop subsidizing the infrastructure cost of building out new suburban areas (water, sewer, electrical, schools, police and fire protection, etc.). Let the developers pay the full marginal cost of new development, and we would put a serious limit on suburban sprawl.
People should be able to walk around their own neighborhoods safely. This means sidewalks, or at least wide shoulders. And in many places, it would mean limiting speeds. I live in the city, so I’m ok with stop signs or stoplights on every block. People who want to live 30 miles away from their jobs shouldn’t be empowered to ruin other people’s neighborhoods to shave a few minutes off their commutes. These costs should also be borne by the highway budget.
If you have an adequate sidewalk and safe road crossings at reasonable intervals, much of the problem is solved. Don’t do it for cyclists; do it for pedestrians. Pedestrian deaths far outnumber cyclist deaths, but they tend to occur in the same places for the same reasons. And every adequate sidewalk can double as a bike path in a pinch.
If you see a cyclist on a clearly inappropriate road, it’s not because he wants to be there. He’s probably been riding in safe biking areas, and then he hits a chokepoint or barrier and the only way through is to get out on the arterial road. Very often, at least here, this occurs when the safe sidewalks were taken years ago to create new traffic lanes and no mitigation was undertaken. This is bad highway design. Highway builders and motorists should pay to fix the problems they create for other people.
If you ride a bike, you need to pay your way, just like the rest of us. Cars pay their way with gasolene taxes and licenses/car tags.
Bikes pay nothing.