Home » Editorials » New bike lanes offer chance for cyclists to step up
New bike lanes offer chance for cyclists to step up
Published: 09-04-12
According to the Chicago Department of Transportation, the city will spend an estimated $4.6 million on creating protected bicycle lanes this year by installing pylons to separate bike traffic from motor vehicles. The city hopes to add 650 miles of bike lanes by 2020 as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to make Chicago the most bike-friendly city in the country.
This is obviously a great time to be a cyclist. Protected bike lanes shield both cyclists and motorists from dangerous collisions. Bicycles are an affordable and environmentally friendly form of transportation and deserve consideration when it comes to urban planning and safety.
That being said, all eyes are on cyclists now. The era of reckless, law-flouting cyclists needs to end, and they may need to start paying vehicle taxes similar to motorists.
According to the CDT, protected bike lanes cost approximately $140,000 per mile. With cyclists not paying taxes for parking, licensing or fuel, this could escalate the already heated culture clash between cyclists
and motorists.
Now that the city is spending so much money on bike amenities, there is no reason why cyclists can’t spare $20 or $30 to register their bikes with the city. After all, drivers currently pay $85 or $135 for city vehicle stickers, depending on vehicle size.
Vehicle stickers are expected to generate $115.4 million in revenue this year, according to a financial report released by the City
Clerk’s office.
The vehicle tax fund, financed by city stickers and other fees such as car impoundments, pays for the repair of roads and it ended last year with a surplus of $14.3 million. This fund has not always covered the cost of all roadwork, but the recent $60 increase in some vehicle sticker prices is expected to generate enough revenue to continue this surplus despite the added cost of bike lanes, according to the financial report.
“Spending has been relatively constant and more closely in line with revenues,” according to the financial report, in regards to vehicle fees.
Motorists pay for a significant portion of the city’s roads. It is only fair that cyclists, now having the same legal and political status as motorists, should pay for the infrastructure being built for them.
Some drivers are quick to point out that traffic laws are not as heavily enforced on cyclists. This needs to change for the benefit of everyone on the road. Any law applying to motorists applies to cyclists as well.
Cyclists need to follow traffic laws now more than ever, and police need to enforce them more, with fines being utilized to pay for new bike lanes.
Chicago’s ambitious plan to build a comprehensive network of protected bike lanes is the first step in creating an atmosphere in which riding a bike to work or school is as viable a transportation choice as driving. As long as cyclists and motorists take responsibility in sharing the road and its cost, Chicago can indeed become the most bike-friendly city in the country.
3 Responses to “New bike lanes offer chance for cyclists to step up”
Leave a Reply
All comments are moderated before being published. We will not edit comments, but we also will not approve those that are abusive, off-topic, attack another person, include profanity or contain information we know to be libelous or false. Please include a valid e-mail address, as we will not approve comments with invalid or fake e-mail addresses. Most comments will be reviewed within 8 hours during weekdays. Comments posted on weekends may not be approved until Monday. For more information, please visit the "about us" link at the bottom of the page.
we should be encouraging people to ride bikes more, by building lanes like this as well as other ideas. making up fees for people making the environmental choice is a disincentive. people who choose driving a polluting motor vehicle in an already overcrowded city should be paying more for that privilege. people who choose bikes and public transportation should be rewarded, not fined.
I am not opposed to this idea in principle – I would like bikers to move into the “mainstream” in terms of acceptance by other commuters, and this may be a way to facilitate that.
However, if bikers are to pay tolls, I believe they should be commensurate with our impact relative to that of cars. Cars weigh about 4000 pounds on average; a very heavy bike is about 40. The resulting wear and tear on our roads is necessarily disparate.
Just take whatever cars are charged as a toll and divide by 100; then, subtract whatever the city determines fair in terms of the difference in reduced congestion (bikes are much smaller and can be parked pretty much anywhere, and so do not have the same negative impact on quality of life downtown as a car) and the health consequences of a single car’s air pollution on the public at large (asthma, emphysema, and even the unpleasant smells associated with car pollutants – each car contributes their little bit). I believe I could live with the resulting costs.
Dear Reporter, you are incorrect when you say that cyclists don’t pay taxes for road use. To start with, many cyclist are also drivers, which means they are paying for city stickers, fuel etc. However, the money derived from these sources is mostly dedicated to freeways and highways–infrastructure not utilized by cyclists. All other roads are mostly financed by general tax funds. So as Elly Blue, reporter for the Grist put it “This means that anyone who owns a home, rents, purchases taxable goods, collects taxable income, or runs a business also pays for the roads.” It is true that a small percentage of the funds derived from motor-vehicle taxes is used for local roads as well, but when you do the math as Austin C. suggested, motorists actually gain. Non-drivers subsidize the costs incurred by motorized vehicles. Here’s a link to the Grist article: http://tinyurl.com/d7z8trf