The Best Bicycle Tax: A Street Utility Fee


I suppose it was entirely predictable…

City Club issued its report last week “No Turning Back: A City Club Report on Bicycle Transportation in Portland” – basically concluding that bicycles are now part of the urban transportation fabric and need to be thoroughly integrated into our transportation planning process, with a focus on education and safety.

But the press focused in on just one recommendation: a 4% state-wide excise tax on the sale of new bicycles to help fund education, safety programs, and measurement.

In fact, it took about two seconds for one online publication to put up a poll on whether a 4% tax for bicycle infrastructure was a good idea or not, completely twisting the message.

The Oregonian waited a whole week to oppose the tax, on the grounds that it was asking the whole state to pay for “Portland’s bike challenges”.

But the Oregonian did make an important point: cyclists are not getting a free ride, they pay for the street system as much as drivers do (in fact, most of them are drivers).

So what’s a cycling advocate supposed to think about this? In general we like the report, a lot!

But key activists are NOT rallying to oppose the tax (although we suspect it’s going nowhere fast). If cyclists are going to be taxed, it should be a tax that does not act as a barrier to trying cycling, as a license or registration fee would be. And even if we already have “skin in the game” for funding the street system, it would be helpful to have that abundantly clear to citizens at-large. And safety and education programs are critical and enjoy widespread support among cycling advocates.

But my own preference would be a completely different approach. We are dramatically underfunding our transportation system and that’s going to need to change soon. I’d like the approach to be a street utility fee (paid like a water or sewer bill, based on the trips your property helps generate). The beauty of this approach is that it’s mode-neutral. We ALL pay for the transportation system whether we walk, bike, drive or take transit. What could be fairer than that?


23 responses to “The Best Bicycle Tax: A Street Utility Fee”

  1. What about charging people based on how far they live from work- this seems fairly correlated with demands on the transportation system.

  2. One of the things that strikes me as a bit unfair is that the state allocates gas tax revenues based on where vehicles are registered instead of where the miles are driven. Do you think this is something that could be changed? This would benefit economically successful areas at the expense of others so there might need to be an offsetting piece of this

  3. I’m all in favor of a street utility fee. One caveat: a street fee in Portland should be neighborhood-based; most of the money (say, 2/3rds) should be used in the neighborhood where it’s collected, following priorities set by residents of the neighborhood through a public process. Neighborhoods should also be able to vote to raise their local street fees above the baseline fee if they want more or faster improvements.

  4. As a cyclist, I use the transportation infrastructure, but I don’t degrade it in the way a car or truck would. 10,000 bikes running up and down an asphalt street don’t do the same damage as 10,000 large trucks.

    How could this fee be balanced so the resident who doesn’t own a car doesn’t pay as much as the one who drives a large truck?

  5. What igor said.

    Also, low-density development requires more “street” per capita than does high-density development (although the higher-density development may wear the streets faster).

    And a quick reminder: In Corvallis, the fee levied to fund free transit service on CTS is tacked on to the water bill, essentially.

  6. Just raise the gas tax, already.
    Remember this chart?

    http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/countyfair/economistgastaxes.jpg

    Every other developed nation charges at least 10 times as much fuel tax as the USA.

    The money should go to the state general fund, with a portion used to pay for needed transportation infrastructure, and the rest used to mitigate the harms of imported oil dependence, climate change, traffic, air pollution, etc.

    But the funding for rebuilding streets should be out of the general fund; it’s a necessary service just like police and fire and parks, not usage based as much as water or electricity or phone service. Every house and business needs street access.

    On the other hand, highways should be funded by direct user fees (per mile and per ton tolls), because their cost is based mainly on use. And the parking along streets (which often takes up almost 50% of the pavement area) should paid for by user fees when there is enough demand for it.

  7. Gas tax and weight-based vehicle registration charges. We don’t really build new roads around here. Most of the money goes to fixing damage. So why don’t we charge based on the level of damage a vehicle makes? Taxing every property equally is silly, because every property doesn’t impact the roads equally.

  8. Don’t forget that the state constitution mandates that gas taxes and registration fees be spent on right of way only. Can’t use for transit. I like Corvallis’ approach.

  9. A road fee that applies independent of mode and independent of equity considerations like income? What would the rating factors be that determined how many “trips” a household generated? I don’t see how this would be anything other than a flat per-person fee, like the arts tax.

    The city has exhibited a somewhat volatile response to that tax… Is it really a stable structure for funding major services?

  10. The City of Portland worked out a street fee proposal years ago. They simply need the political courage to go forward with it and a strong message to sell it. From memory: the last time around, the City proposed collecting it through the water bill; opponents (quite dishonestly) demagogued it as a “tax on water” and the City withdrew the proposal. I think the old plan might need a little tweaking to make it more politically palatable. Collecting it as a line item on the water bill seems to be a political liability, no matter how sensible it is from an efficiency standpoint.

  11. A weight-based fee makes sense. Apply it to motor vehicles as part of registration. Not sure how you’d apply it to bikes, though. And what about pedestrians? How do we tax them? Do heavy peds pay more?

  12. “If cyclists are going to be taxed, it should be a tax that does not act as a barrier to trying cycling, as a license or registration fee would be. And even if we already have “skin in the game” for funding the street system, it would be helpful to have that abundantly clear to citizens at-large. And safety and education programs are critical and enjoy widespread support among cycling advocates.”

    With a moderate climate, yes cycling does proliferate in this city. And because of that proliferation it inaugurates new dangers. Since I live right on the Springwater trail, I can verify that there are a lot of cyclists that are taking safety risks, and a lot of them are also violating vehicle lighting laws and warning device laws. And as a driver, I can verify that Portland drivers act very courteously to cyclists, and implement a lot of defensive driving techniques.

    OTOH, if enough people opted for this mode it could theoretically reduce road building and maintenance demand. The problem is that nearly everyone in any city is dependent upon well maintained roadways—for whatever your consumer wants are—to being able to get emergency assistance, police, ambulance, fire dept. etc, just as soon as possible. I think cycling advocates may forget how dependent their lifestyle is on roadways. And because bicycling for commercial purposes is pretty impractical for the general population, cyclists need to accept that other road users aren’t to blame for the general stress.

    With the money that cycling commuter enthusiasts claim to be saving ( and I agree that a car can be expensive) why should a small tax be a hurdle?

  13. The problem with a fee like a sewer fee is that it doesn’t discourage overuse, in fact it may encourage overuse. For example currently we have a very high registration fee for motorhomes, this actually may make people feel like they need to drive these vehicles even more because of the money they have sunk into it. We should be focused on charging for the behaviors we are trying to discourage, like SOV trips to downtown portland during peak periods. The best way to do that in my opinion is to quit subsidizing city owned automobile parking.

  14. I have said it here before, as have many others, but I think the foremost approach to raising transportation funds equitably needs to be that we stop giving away automobile parking.

    We don’t dedicate massive swathes of public space solely for the free/cheap private storage of luxury yachts, hot tubs, or home gym equipment. Why should any other exclusive personal property be treated differently?

    Privately owned parking lots and garages should also be subject to per-use taxes.

    But, as there are very few willing to take parking seriously, I’d still absolutely support a usage-based street-utility fee. Ideally, I think it would end up as a complex formula comprised of a flat user fee per resident and variable rates depending on overall weight of vehicles owned, number of automobiles, streetfront real estate owned, and miles traveled. How any of this would be calculated is beyond me…

  15. “But, as there are very few willing to take parking seriously, I’d still absolutely support a usage-based street-utility fee. Ideally, I think it would end up as a complex formula comprised of a flat user fee per resident and variable rates depending on overall weight of vehicles owned, number of automobiles, streetfront real estate owned, and miles traveled. How any of this would be calculated is beyond me…”

    Even if this is considered “fair” it would be such a radical change that it would be unfair. In Portland, being the western frontier city that it is, most people bought single family homes. But if you live in a luxury high rise building with several dozen units, then your street frontage percentage would be very small. And because of the traditional single family character of Portland, people have traditionally opted for motor vehicle travel. So there is a weight of tradition for the way we have been doing things to be considered fair. Vehicle weight, alone,is not the only or main factor in road deterioration. Trucks with rough tires cause most of it, and this reflects more on spending and consumer choices than personal vehicle ownership.

    And I will say it again, even if you don’t have a car your lifestyle is still dependent upon roadways. The answer to equitable transportation expenditure lies more with cost saving innovation. For example, I could see bike trails going through more rugged terrain as necessary, by using prefabbed components and perhaps small concrete pilings. The sidewalks on the Hawthorne Bridge are prefabbed sections, light in weight, and everyone seems happy with them.

    Prefabrication and standardization would save a lot of money in all kinds of transportation construction. The current, formed in place concrete components are very labor intensive. A prime example is the CRC project, with its built-over-water concrete sections. A prefabbed metal bridge would be much cheaper (Hint)

  16. Ron,

    I disagree with your logic on taxes for large vehicles. Just because people purchase the goods that they bring to market, does not necessarily mean that those same people would want them to be subsidized. On the contrary, most car free individuals I know support local products when possible. The transportation subsidies for large trucks do nothing but hurt local products, because they make the importing of out of state and international goods cheaper.

    Yes, we need roads and rails to get the products we use, but every mode needs to pay for the damage they cause.

  17. “The transportation subsidies for large trucks do nothing but hurt local products, because they make the importing of out of state and international goods cheaper.”

    I was more alarmed at the idea that as a homeowner with 50 ft of frontage, I might pay more than a condo owner with 5 ft. Although I appreciate the fact that such condos are making good use of the land that they are built upon. It’s just that such a transition would be swift and very hard for many people to adjust too.

    Maybe trucks should be taxed more. I’ve been told that that is where more of the road damage comes from, because of their rougher tread (compared to the standard “automobile highway tread” that is little more than straight grooves. The long term goal should be more freight on rails.

    As far as buying locally, this is a good principle, but may be unaffordable for some. However, since I still believe in single family homes, the materials for them would be US or NW produced, and a much higher volume than an urban condo. Trust me, the builders have really pared down how much they have to put into these new condos, except perhaps for the volume of concrete. Which almost always is local.

    And then as far as miles traveled, I would have rather taken a bus a few miles to a job, which I did at one time, than get up at 6 am on dark, rainy winter mornings and drive for 30-40 minutes. But, presumably, this area wanted the Silicon Forest and the Pearl District and NIKE. Amazon, Seahawks Stadium, etc. built, so that was the only way I could do it. Being a homeowner I didn’t consider renting some place just for a short term so I could bicycl it. Gonna tax me extra, because my work is fifteen miles away?

  18. I think the concept of the street fee would be that each property would be taxed primarily on the number of trips it generates, with an assumption that a home generates some modest number per day, and that businesses generate more trips depending on the type of business. In other words, each home and condo would pay the same fee on the assumption that each one generates a roughly comparable number of trips.

  19. a bit unfair is that the state allocates gas tax revenues based on where vehicles are registered instead of where the miles are driven

    This imbalance exists with the Sellwood Bridge funding, when drivers of vehicles registered in Clackamas County use the bridge to commute into Multnomah County, and get the owners of vehicles registered in that county to pay for it.

  20. We ALL pay for the transportation system whether we walk, bike, drive or take transit. What could be fairer than that?

    The problem with a blanket fee is that we use the system in vastly different amounts. The tax for someone who mostly walks/bikes/takes transit would be the same as for someone who drives a lot.

    Overall, I think a bicycle use tax is fair…once drivers pay for their parking, environmental cleanup (like a portion of the Big Pipe sewer project), oil supply defense, etc. And if bicyclists get a 100% discount for attempting to be healthy and reduce society’s giant health care burden.

    As for road transportation funding, the easiest, fair way seems to fund the local road system using the gas tax and fund highways (when they’re an option over and above the local road system) using tolls.

  21. Douglas, what you describe would from a resident’s perspective be a flat per household fee. A westside millionaire with a kid driving a Mercedes would pay the same as a barista living in the pearl or a poverty level household on the east side.

    That might have passed 10 years ago, but in the wake of the arts tax and in particular the mayor’s criticism of that on equity grounds I’d be surprised if it could fly now.

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