Portland Bike Registration Bill

[angryirish]

As a gun owner, I’m curious to see the reaction from the left…
Bike registration bill rankles Portland riders The proposal calls for a $54 fee on adult bikes every two years Saturday, March 07, 2009 The Oregonian

**Bike-fee bill greeted . . . as expected **

In some places you don’t mess with gun rights. In Portland, you don’t mess with bikes.
So it was no surprise Friday when Portland’s avid cycling community erupted after four Oregon legislators proposed a $54 fee for registering adult bikes every two years.

BikePortland, a local cycling blog, was besieged with complaints.
The “intention is exactly to discourage and kill cycling,” one blogger fumed. Another fretted about the hefty tab for his garage full of bikes.
Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, one of the chief sponsors of House Bill 3008, conceded the legislation probably won’t pass, particularly with “everybody struggling” in the bad economy.
But he said that “we need to be thinking of how (cyclists) can help fund more of what they want.”
Karl Rohde, a lobbyist for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, said his group is willing to discuss whether cyclists should help pay for bikeways. But, he said, anything “that discourages cycling is bad.”
– Jeff Mapes

[dvfmfidc]

dumbasses…

next they will want a co2 monitor on your bike too!

[dkv]

This doesn’t seem like a bad idea on the surface. Maybe not enforceable, but you should share the fees if you share the road.

[bhauser]

We’ve had similar discussions pop up here in Iowa over the last year or two. Last year, one of the congressmen threw out the idea of a bike registration fee to help pay for some of the trails and signeage on the road. Right now, there is pending legislation around requiring cars to give cyclists 5 feet when passing and a few other “common sense” measures. On the cycling message boards, the discussion usually sounds something like “Waa, I want to have the same rights as a car” and “Waa, I shouldn’t have to pay for it - but some fat redneck driving a pickup should”.

As for me?

1 - I’m ok with paying some sort of fee to help support the infrastructure that I use. Then I may have a leg to stand on if I want to make the argument that I have as much right to the road as vehicles.

2 - You can register my guns - assuming you can pry them from my cold, dead hands!

[jackmott]

This doesn’t seem like a bad idea on the surface. Maybe not enforceable, but you should share the fees if you share the road.

shouldn’t have to pay to register your car either. what a bunch of wasteful horseshit. let the government collect the taxes necessary for infrastructure from our paychecks and then LEAVE US ALOOONE

=)

[Dapper_Dan]

I would agree to pay for my use of the road or trails. But, consideration must be given that bikes cause very little wear on the roadways, and don’t require much in the way of parking spaces, traffic enforcement, or emergency services. I shouldn’t have to pay for a bike bridge over a busy highway when the bridge wouldn’t be necessary were it not for cars.

Since my car registration is about $50 (AZ, old car), seems pretty steep for a bike.

In AZ they only have to give us 3 feet. But, you may as well say 1 foot because that is about what most cars give me.

Dan

[bhauser]

Yeah - it does sound a bit steep. However, consider that Portland has a lot of bike lanes, as well as a fairly good trail system (I don’t have first hand knowledge of this, but based on what I hear and read…). So, the cost of building and supporting that infrastructure is higher than in other areas.

As a comparison, I “lived” in Denmark for 2 months, in a very rural area on a small island. Even there, there were bike lanes about 8 feet wide on both sides of a lot of the roads. It was great if you were biking. But it’s also called socialism as income tax is 70%, tax on a vehicle purchase (car, truck, motorcycle) is 200%, and I believe sales tax was something like 25%. I’d prefer to not have that system here!

[YaHey]

I think registering a car or motorcycle makes sense. They are both fairly expensive assets that require tracking of ownership. Just having the State manage the title process. This title process gives car loan companies rights, it also gives insurance companies the ability to underwrite your vehicle. The title system allows for the police and curts to track your car. This also applies to other assets you might have, plus your drivers lincense - this is the primary reason for registration.

I realize that in some people’s minds the registration fee could be used for building infrastructure, like a use tax, but I just don’t see how that is possible as there’s not much left in the end.

[nickc]

At least they could make it the same as a electric scooter $27, not the $54 that a passenger vehicle costs. That would make a little more sense.

[Goose]

I don’t have a huge issue with the idea behind the bill, I’m from Portland and think if used effectively this could be a decent idea. However, it looks like this was proposed by state legislators outside of Portland with the goal of stirring up some trouble in the city.

[DaveB_CRV]

I heard about this bill yesterday, and my first thoughts:

1. difficult to enforce. The jails will soon fill up with unregistered cyclist
2. Might have to clean the garage.
3. I’d have no problem paying a registration fee, if most of the money raised was going to bike programs (lanes, trails, etc) AND they put a road tax on cars by raising the tax on Gasoline. Increase the tax by $1-$2 per gallon. Allow some sort of deduction for Farmers/Ranchers, and the commercial trucks tax would not increase.

[Bob_Loblaw]

This doesn’t seem like a bad idea on the surface. Maybe not enforceable, but you should share the fees if you share the road.

former portland resident.
yes, there are an imprssive number of bike lanes there (including the improbable bike lane on the beaverton-hillsdale highway).
the overwhelming majority of people who bike on those lanes pay plenty of taxes that already subsidize developing roads for automobiles to use.

surprising to see this idea in oregon, where republicans tend to trend libertarian.

[dkv]

This doesn’t seem like a bad idea on the surface. Maybe not enforceable, but you should share the fees if you share the road.

the overwhelming majority of people who bike on those lanes pay plenty of taxes that already subsidize developing roads for automobiles to use.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who drive on the roads subsidize those bicycle lanes.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who use mass transit subsidize those bicycle lanes.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who walk to work subsidize those bicycle lanes.

I think if I had to pay the fees I would be grumpy. As a third-party observer, I think that it may support the notion that cyclists are responsible and equal to other users of publicly funded roadways.

[tri-ac]

This doesn’t seem like a bad idea on the surface. Maybe not enforceable, but you should share the fees if you share the road.

the overwhelming majority of people who bike on those lanes pay plenty of taxes that already subsidize developing roads for automobiles to use.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who drive on the roads subsidize those bicycle lanes.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who use mass transit subsidize those bicycle lanes.
Or, the overwhelming majority of people who walk to work subsidize those bicycle lanes.

I think if I had to pay the fees I would be grumpy. As a third-party observer, I think that it may support the notion that cyclists are responsible and equal to other users of publicly funded roadways.

a majority of the road cyclists (commuters and athletes) are car owners already and do pay for the infrastructure via car registrations and fuel taxes.

furthermore, a good number of those car-owning cyclists also own homes and even businesses, which Oregon also taxes to add to the transportation funding.

if anything, the cyclists are already carrying their own loads in this regard, especially when you consider many cyclists don’t use their cars on the roads as much as normal drivers.

additionally, cyclists reduce traffic, reduce road repair costs, reduce greenhouse emissions, reduce parking infrastructure costs…not to mention promote healthy lifestyles

this bill is written to isolate and minimize state funding of cycling infrastructure by tagging its sources to one cycling fund supported by the license registration fees.

among the many problems with this bill is that it is not even self-sustaining financially…no tax or registration fee is capable of that…imagine what the cost would be if road users had to pay a fee that exclusively supported road repair and construction…there would be no usable roads…hell, a single major interstate bridge costs billions.

cyclists are willing to pay their share but this bill is not the way to do it

[dkv]

I wouldn’t argue that you don’t have a point. Or even that it’s not a good one.

It might, as a political move, make some of those bike-hating drivers dial down the hate a little bit.

Or, it might not.

[tri-ac]

I wouldn’t argue that you don’t have a point. Or even that it’s not a good one.

It might, as a political move, make some of those bike-hating drivers dial down the hate a little bit.

Or, it might not.

if the bill were that innocent, cyclists might support it for the marketing value, as you suggest

unfortunately, i doubt adding self-regulating legislation would assuage the angry drivers…they’d still be late for wherever they’re speeding off too (i’d cite car-on-car road rage as an example), and they’d take the additional regulation as proof that cyclists need to be controlled instead of accepted as equals (though more squishable equals) on the road…it’s a losing proposition to allow anything like this bill to proceed