Money to go to save what remains of the precious Peruvian Coffee Forests.
Posted on 07/18/2017 12:59:41 AM PDT by gattaca
“Even though the funding has been earmarked for improvements that will benefit cyclists...”
I recommend the tax associations keep a close eye on the caveated “earmarks”
Will this included outlawing free range curs?
Tax the hell out of them.
"Want more of something - subsidize it - like illegitimacy and cheese."
We will now have the standard rim and the Oregon rim.
“If you walk too much, they’ll tax your feet”
Government, sucks
Socialism only works until you run out of other people's money. :-)
That is why the British celebrate Guy Fawkes day. The cost of a new parliament building is cheap compared to the cost to a free people of maintaining a parliament.
The bike nazi cabal around here got the city to modify roads to add bike lanes. The only thing was that in the process the city REMOVED miles of right hand lanes from the road system leading to worse traffic congestion and driver frustration. Your use of “neighborhoods” is an oversimplification. Very few people work in their local neighborhood, even fewer bike the extended miles to work. Also, your point about bike riders being car owners is a straw man. If you own more than one vehicle then you pay fees and taxes on every vehicle, cycles should be taxed accordingly. Nothing in the transportation system is free. If all vehicles left the road system overnight it would still require maintenance for the cyclers.
Taxing pot, bicycles, ahh but if we could tax liberal lunacy the revenue streams would flow in like rivers.
The feel-good story of the day.
Now whose ox got gored?
In my opinion, it’s better than raising everyone’s property taxes. The state is literally covered in bicycle lanes which everyone ends up paying for, even those who don’t use them.
But separate bike "roads" designed adjacent to freeways and highways? Yep, time to tax the bikes to pay for them.
Oh the irony when their ox gets gored.
Eminent domain has its place (and is Constitutionally legal), but it is clearly vulnerable to abuse, and should always be watched carefully.
It's certainly easier and more cost effective to apply your standards to new road construction. But what would you do about existing roads?
How much of your property would you be willing to have taken from you to add a bike lane on your street?
And speaking of "bike issues", for me the biggest one is the reluctance of cyclists to abide by the same traffic laws that motorists are required to obey. How would you deal with that issue?
Pay your fair share, Rats!! Quit crying about it!!
Oregon let themselves become scammed by the Democrats. Once the Democrats get control, they will tax everything. They will tax toilet paper by the sheet and the hair on your head. When they get through, you are lucky to have your shirt.
Money to go to save what remains of the precious Peruvian Coffee Forests.
In too many places, however, road builders lose sight of non-motorized travel and they build roads that become barriers. Forget about bicylists and think about pedestrians. Can kids get across the street safely? Can they walk to a school that is a half mile or a mile away? Can they visit friends on the other side of the road without the parents having to drive them? Can elderly people take a walk to the local park? Do joggers have anywhere to go when they leave their little cul de sac? If you take care of the kids, dog walkers, moms with strollers and joggers, cyclists can generally use the same infrastructure.
The issue that I regularly encounter when I get on a bike and start ranging will be areas where there used to be sidewalks or shoulders, but these were long ago sacrificed (along with front yards and tree plats) to make additional travel lanes for cars. Commuter sewers can destroy what used to be perfectly decent residential neighborhoods, and I have no hesitation at all in arguing that roadbuilders in such situations should pay the cost of reasonable remediation, such as bike paths, safe crossings, and appropriate landscaping. These are not expensive frills demanded by elitist snobs; they are minimal compensation for affected residents if you want to drive an ugly, dirty, noisy, dangerous road through someone else's neighborhood. Roads should not become barriers (i.e., there should be frequent crossings at intervals appropriate for non-motorized movement). Chokepoints should be opened (e.g., put sidewalks or bike lanes on bridges). Gaps should be filled. Study a map of bike paths sometime, and you will see many examples of good networks in many neighborhoods across a metro area, but they often don't link up. That forces cyclists onto inappropriate streets to transit the gap.
So: when you see a bicyclist on a heavily trafficked commuter road where he is obviously out of place, you are usually seeing bad design. The cyclist has been flushed from cover by a gap or a chokepoint. Most bike commuters ride most of their routes on safe street where you will never see them. If they get flushed out onto the main roads from time to time, it's because of poor road design that should be remediated.
The spandex warriors are not the issue here. There aren't many of them; they are mainly an indicator species. The typical bike commute is under five miles. Most bike commuters are people trying to get around their own neighborhoods. There is an implicit ownership issue here that should be acknowledged. Motorists tend to start with the assumption that "the roads are ours and we resent accommodations for cyclists and pedestrians." But people who actually live in a neighborhood tend to think, "the neighborhood is ours and the neighborhood streets are ours; our neighborhood should not be degraded for the convenience of suburban interlopers who want a speedway to their jobs." As a resident of one of those "in the way" neighborhoods that motorists would like to bulldoze and pave over, I side with the residents over the transients.
If your commute is too long, consider living closer to your job. I grant that my neighborhood is an outlier; a majority of people do not take a car to work; over ten percent bike; and even more walk. This is not possible everywhere, but in major cities in which jobs are increasingly dispersed across multiple regional, often suburban job centers (not everyone goes downtown), the transportation planners should not assume everyone is going to drive. If you have suburban office park and shopping centers surrounded by miles of residential development, create an attractive and safe infrastructure that lets people within a five mile radius bike to work. That's not radical bike freak thinking; it's making it possible for people to get around their own neighborhoods efficiently. And if you make sure that this neighborhood system links to similar systems in surrounding neighorhoods, you have a regional system that can be utilized by the spandex warriors who do longer commutes.
Somebody needs to tell him about WALKING!
It's even more healthier, cheaper, enviro-friendly, efficient and economically sustainable!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.