As you and your ilk support adult provocateurs, I'll accept registration fees and a picture ID license.
Roads are funded from a wide variety of sources. Many taxes on auto registration and fuel are actually diverted to other things. Cars and trucks wear roads out. Bikes don't.
Roads are funded from tolls and by auto gas taxes. Bicyclist contribute squat. Yes, some of gas taxes go to fund non road expenses. Again, no contribution from bicyclists. Cars wear out the roads? You should look at the stresses that road pavements go through during seasonal temperature changes and the effects of freezing weather.
Great idea. Let's do it by weight. Pay whatever your vehicle weighs.
We already pay taxes by weight. The heavier the vehicle the more gas it uses and gas taxes it pays. You really don't put much thought into your arguments.
They already are. The laws obviously aren't enforced as strictly as against motorists, but do you really want little Timmy getting slapped with a ticket because he coasted through the four way stop between his house and the park? He looked both ways he stopped peddling and braked, but his wheels never actually came to a complete stop. Do you want him tagged? Bone headed cyclists doing things like blowing through red lights are already fully subject to traffic laws, and do get tickets.
Cops don't enforce bike laws because bicyclists are not required to produce a registration of an picture ID. They can tell the cops their name is Donald Duck for all they care and the cops can't do anything about it. As for little Timmy, mommy is not about to let him go riding with anarchists in urban streets.
Governmental approval to ride and own a little bike? Who's the commie?
Where is the right enshrined where you can ride a bike on a public way? There isn't any. It's the same for cars. It's a privilege. The commie is you as you support anarchy!
Oh I don't know...the laws of 50 states and all territories, in addition to the laws of every known country on earth, perhaps?
When you decide to get insulting with lines like "You really don't put much thought into your arguments", and imply some cognitive superiority on your part, you should then be more careful not to leading with your jaw like this?
I'm all for it. Let's extend the gas tax to bikes. I promise from now on to pay the proper tax on all gas used by my bicycle. Satisfied?
And if you don't realize it, trucks are licensed by weight, pretty much everywhere I'd bet. Let's just assign the same standard to 18 lb bicycles that we do to 4 ton vehicles, that are taxed at a high rate due to their weight, because their weight causes road damage far and beyond any thawing and freezing. Ask any road engineer you know how different roads would be if heavy vesicles didn't travel them.
Properly ridden bicycles do no more damage to the road, than bugs landing on the roadway. Biking allows millions of people that don't have means to get to a job across town. The only real damage it does is to the fragile egos and psyches of cranky old coots and pickup driving, hayseed mama's boys, with latent worries about their own sexual preference.
People that behave badly on bikes are subject to the same sanction that people that behave anywhere badly are. But bikes have existed for centuries and have been sharing roadways with cars and trucks since cars and trucks came around. There are very well defined laws that define where bicycles can legally be ridden. Turns out it's just about everywhere other than controlled access roadways, where that fact is clearly marked on every entrance ramp. It's been this way for a about a century, in every place anybody ever heard of. Get used to it.
Hear, Hear!