BIKE: Proposed law for $5 MB set aside

[Chuck_Thomas]

Yeah, but it's not fair.  Someone on a $2,000 super bike is consuming
the same amount of bike roadway resource as I am on my $100 clunker. The
% method would ask expensive bike owners to pay more for the same amount
of resource consumed.  It's not like cars, where the bigger, heavier,
more expensive ones consume more resources than the cheap, light ones.

-----Original Message-----
From: forum-bicycleaustin.info-bounces
[mailto:forum-bicycleaustin.info-bounces] On
Behalf Of elizabeth gray
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 5:45 PM
To: forum-bicycleaustin.info
Subject: BIKE: Proposed law for $5 MB set aside

<There's no such thing as a free lunch and in a rational world where
transportation funding was truly tailored to the most effective
transportation solutions, perhaps there would be a better source of
funds for bicycle infrastructure.  Right now in a legislature where
Republican rule and the suburbs are their focus, this looks like a
winner.  And it does, after all, link the infrastructure costs to the
user, which is a sound principle of public finance.>

We certainly do need the money!  So to really make an impact, why not
have it be a five PERCENT fee instead of five DOLLAR fee?

The proposed law applies to all bikes over $50.  The $5.00 fee for a
cheap
$55 Wal Mart bike would be 9% of the purchase price.  If we expect
low-income people to pay that much, then of course more expensive bike 
buyers can also handle this worthwhile fee.   If we apply that
percentage to 
the nicer bikes we can really collect some serious money!

Elizabeth Gray



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