BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I registered my bike at Pitt's Bike-Free-Friday. I don't think it will do a damn bit of good, but it was free, the lady was really insistent, and I didn't really care. They let me put the ginormous sticker on the very bottom part of my seat tube, where it gets all muddy anyhow.

Where I used to live, in order to operate your bike on campus, it was mandated by a local ordnance that you register it. The only way I could see it helping is if someone checked the serial number before buying a used bike, or the police found an abandoned/stolen bike, and are able to look you up by the serial number. Two very unlikely events.

Registration sticker, noun. 1. An identifying tag affixed to a bike frame with an adhesive substance. 2. The first thing removed by a bike thief.

There are two sorts of bike registration. The first is the one mentioned where you register with either local authorities or with a private company with the objecting of recovering your bike should it be stolen.

The other is the form of registration proposed by autodominionists who make claims that cyclists get a free ride and don't actually pay for the roads or that, because bicycles are not registered they do not have the right to use the road that they feel they have paid for.

I cannot imagine that the police would be all that excited to pull over cyclists to verify that they are registered.

There was some controversy earlier this year about registration in Philadelphia, where cyclist/driver hostility is much higher than here. ISTR that some councilman proposed that anyone riding a bike in the city *must* register it with the city - including people visiting from out of town. I don't think the proposal went anywhere. I bet someone less lazy than I will be able to provide a link

When I lived in land of mandatory registration, they wouldn't pull you over just to check, but if they pulled you over for one of the common violations, no headlight, using headphones, rolling a stop sign, etc. you would get an additional citation for operation of an unregistered bike, or some such thing. Usually it was just a fix-it ticket and you could make it go away by registering (which cost somewhere in the ballpark of $20-30 / ~2 years).

one place I lived you had to register anything with a wheel (unicycles were rare, but they would have found a way; bicycles and donkey carts were more common) and pay taxes based on the number of wheels (as well as the presence of the motor or not). I think Japan has registration based on size of engine (like 3L taxes > 2.7L taxes > etc).

I see no reason why we couldn't do the same thing. Quiet the "you don't pay for the roads" nonsense, grade it so that it's proportionate to use, and use it to fund mixed use infrastructure projects. So, to pull example numbers out of the air, let's say registering a hummer would take $2500 a year, down to registering a unicycle for $2. To lessen paperwork, there should be the option for buying several years into the future (so a unicycle could buy 2010-2015 for $10, and a hummer could buy 2010-2015 for $12,500).

You could even set up an algorithm based on wheel diameter or total wheel width so that rollerskates/blades (8 wheels) weren't more than unicycles (1 wheel) (unless they should be?). Or perhaps rollerskates should be exempt as "clothing" and not "transportation". I should get back to work, but this is more fun.

I recommend Bob Mionske's "Cycling and the Law" for an argument why it's important that cyclists must never be made to pay for access to the public way. AAMOF, for anyone who really wants to get into with the advocacy stuff, I'd say it's required reading...

The reason that cars are registered is because they have stringent inspection and insurance requirements. It hardly begins to cover the road damage. Heavy trucks might be a different story, I'm not sure how their "use fees" are structured.

Colleges have bike registration programs mainly so they can control the parking, and deal with the flood of abandoned bikes that materializes every summer.

Bike registration programs have almost always been too expensive to operate -- the costs of administration are greater than the revenues. There certainly would be no money left over to pay for pavement.

ah - I should clarify. The place I lived that the bicycles had to pay taxes had 4 paved roads connecting the major cities. The 5th major city did not have a paved road to it (though it might now). There were virtually no paved roads other than that (the capitol had a few). The taxes were not paying for roads there (and NO wheels was more common as transportation than ANY wheels, we're talking one of the poorest countries in the world, Mali). Nor do the registration fees pay for roads here. But that doesn't stop idiots from using that as an argument.

Rather than educate the idiots, I'm jokingly suggesting mollifying them with a graded tax that can look more like it does the job they think it does. The bike taxes would be window dressing and annoying. The meat would be in the new exhorbitant fees for big cars/SUVs - which could either 1)remove them from the road or 2)generate revenue.

Using Japan and Mali as a combined precedent for any tax structure here is just too entertaining to ignore, however impossible it may be to get passed.

I'm pretty sure the vehicle registration fee (car) wouldn't even cover the cost of making the plate and administering the registration. Motor vehicles have to be registered because they can cause enormous property damage and death, and there has to be a way to track responsibility. When is the last time you heard of a bike putting a hole in a school building (I think I tried, I lost). Reg's have nothing to do with road cost. The only possible public cost a bike could incur would be if some public servant has to cut one off of a meter or something, then they can hold the bike and charge the claimant if they show up, or auction it for the cost. There would be no good to the public by initiating registration.

@lyle Heavy trucks might be a different story, I'm not sure how their "use fees" are structured.

According to a bumper sticker on a truck they pay $20,000 a year in road use taxes. According to the DOT, a fully loaded truck wears down the road as much as 10,000 cars.

Bottom line: Trucks don't pay enough.

If I understand correctly, the wear per mile is proportional to the square of the weight.

You figure a SUV weighs 25 times as much as a portly biker, so the $2 per bike and $2500 for an SUV seems like the SUV is overpaying - exceptthat the gas hog usually puts in ten times more mile. They're getting a deal.

One place I lived - maybe NC - charged an additional fee at registration based on the weight of the vehicle. Interesting idea.

a 30lb kids bike costs more to register than a 18lb 3000 dollar bike... bummer for parents

Take a look at the vehicle registration fees in the state of Montana:

http://www.doj.mt.gov/driving/vehicletitleregistration/lightvehicle.asp

PA does have weight class stickers for trucks that cost between 58.50 and 1687.50 per year depending on weight. Although, SUVs are not classified as trucks AFAIK.

FWIW, SUVs were also exempt from the federal luxury tax that applied to other cars in the 1990's, and they're also (still) exempt from the "gas guzzler" tax. But it's bicycles that don't "pay their fair share", right?

If I understand correctly, the wear per mile is proportional to the square of the weight.

I recall reading that it's more like proportional to 10^4 of the weight. So everything that has been said, a fortiori. A bicycle registration fee of $2 would probably not cover its own administrative costs, and you could appeal to anti-deficit people on the basis that it would require a subsidy from the General Fund.

+1 on "Cycling and the Law." Available at the Carnegie Library.

A buddy of mine moved to Montana and he was shell shocked by the registration fees they charged. They don’t have a state sales tax so they make up for it with a property tax and registration fees.

For a brand new car the yearly registration is $217.00, with a $5.00 insurance verification fee, and a 4.00 park fee.

Then every county sets a mileage rate for it’s automobile property tax. In Yellowstone County it’s .5 so the registration tax for a car valued at $29,000 would be $145.

$371 dollars to register a new car…

That would be "millage" not "mileage". Just for a moment, I thought they had a good idea.

Some other states also have excise taxes based on the value of the vehicle. MA used to, when I lived there, probably still does. I guess if you can spend $30K on a car, $0.4K won't kill you.

sorry for the typo I’m typing on my iphone with my big fat thumb!

I would love to have these issues brought up on a talk show like Pintek's when someone calls in with a "bikers don't pay their fair share" rant.

@ieverheart - much worse, it's weight^4 (although per-axle, which mitigates it somewhat for semis).

So, assuming it costs $36 to register a 4000lb vehicle, the fee for a 300lb bicycle (+rider/cargo) should be about a tenth of a penny.

If they built every bike/ped project on the TIP [PDF] in the 9-county region, it would cost less than $16M.

By contrast, widening just one intersection in Sprawlville (Perry Hwy at Wallace, Pine Twp) will cost $14.1M (link to PDF).

Sheesh!

I never said cars and truck shouldn't pay their fair share, or that bicycles had a measurable share by comparison, or that a $2 fee was reasonable.

I was just pointing out that other places (yes, Mali was until very recently a Socialist state [because USSR offered them universal free college education for it and capitalists just laughed], and Japan's always been another planet) have registration fees and taxes on bikes, and based on engine size. It exists out there.

But if, as ridiculous as it seems, the state did require registration, taxes, and inspection for all bicycles on the road or used in public parks, how many people who use it as their main transportation would stop riding (talking commuters, not weekend warriors)? How high would motor vehicle registration/inspection/taxes have to be to affect their behavior? How slow would the cost creep have to be to be bearable beyond a grumble?

If we could have all the biking infrastructure of our dreams in 5 years, but that meant every bike had a yearly tax on it to help pay for it, would it be worth it? Or would we all rather not have any fees or taxes and spend the next 5 years fighting over money to get the scrap leftovers and one more bike lane in the city?

I'm not saying bike registration or taxes would pay for our wildest dreams, more asking the question - our current structure isn't providing us with what we want, so what are we willing to do about it? I do things I shouldn't have to do all the time because I'd rather live in a world where those things are done than not. It takes more energy to try to get other people to do what they should be doing than to simply do it myself anyway.

Perhaps the musings of a bored, overprivileged geek with an overreaching nesting complex, but please don't confuse them with actual propositions for a realistic tax structure.

Maybe someone already pointed this out, but from another direction, road, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure is paid for with state and/or federal taxes that are paid by everyone who works. Anyone who drives, except those who are physically disabled, is welcome to use the ped and bike facilities as well. If they choose not to use those facilities, that's not the bikers problem. Viewed that way, if bikers are not using the much more expensive motor vehicle infrastructure, they are the ones getting the short stick.