[Out of Towner]

If cyclists are high income people, that means they’re paying much higher property taxes and income taxes than others, right? As well as likely having a lower burden to the tax system with better health and less road damage caused by them?

That’s just if your thesis is correct. But you provided 0 data. Mind backing up your clai

Is there a reason why you and Constance refuse to make a financial contribution, in the form of a user fee, to your transportation of choice? Everybody else does. You can debate whether your property tax already covers your bike path usage adequately, but is your refusal based on financial reasons or something else?

 

[ChazYEG]

And the tax paid by motorists at the pump? And the user fees paid by transit rides? None of that means anything to you? Let me add that the bicycles seen at the coffee shops are not from WalMart that the kids in the north east ride. Most of bike paths are catering to a demographic that ride thousand dollar plus bicycles to the coffee shop.

I literally addressed the Gas Tax ($420M for 2019-2020). User fees paid by transit drivers go to cover the costs of operating transit, and they're not even enough for that, let alone to cover road maintenance (transit is also subsidized with taxes, in general).
Have you also stopped to think that there aren't more people in lower income areas riding bikes BECAUSE THERE'S NO INFRASTRUCTURE?
But again, I, like so many others, brought hard numbers and facts, while you're just trolling and making senseless claims with NOTHING to show for it. Typical cancervative behaviour

 

[ChazYEG]

Is there a reason why you and Constance refuse to make a financial contribution, in the form of a user fee, to your transportation of choice? Everybody else does. You can debate whether your property tax already covers your bike path usage adequately, but is your refusal based on financial reasons or something else?

Again, Why should cyclists pay any more, when they're already subsidizing car infrastructure with their taxes?

 

[Out of Towner]

I literally addressed the Gas Tax ($420M for 2019-2020). User fees paid by transit drivers go to cover the costs of operating transit, and they're not even enough for that, let alone to cover road maintenance (transit is also subsidized with taxes, in general).
Have you also stopped to think that there aren't more people in lower income areas riding bikes BECAUSE THERE'S NO INFRASTRUCTURE?
But again, I, like so many others, brought hard numbers and facts, while you're just trolling and making senseless claims with NOTHING to show for it. Typical cancervative behaviour

 

[an_edmontonian]

Is there a reason why you and Constance refuse to make a financial contribution, in the form of a user fee, to your transportation of choice? Everybody else does. You can debate whether your property tax already covers your bike path usage adequately, but is your refusal based on financial reasons or something else?

Would you support the gas tax being increased substantially to cover the costs of private motor infrastructure and massive parking lots? Until that happens non car users will continue to subsidize car users by a huge amount each year.

 

[ChazYEG]

was there a response here?

 

[Out of Towner]

I vote liberal and own a bicycle and am willing to pay a user fee for using bicycle paths because I think it's fair. I go to coffee shops and see cyclists with their expensive bicycles drinking their expensive designer beverages. Again, this isn't kids in the northeast riding WalMart bicycles or the guy with a crap job drinking coffee at Tim Horton's, we're talking about cyclists with all the gear refusing to pay their own way because they're cheap skates and would rather leach off of government funding.

 

[an_edmontonian]

I vote liberal and own a bicycle and am willing to pay a user fee for using bicycle paths because I think it's fair. I go to coffee shops and see cyclists with their expensive bicycles drinking their expensive designer beverages. Again, this isn't kids in the northeast riding WalMart bicycles or the guy with a crap job drinking coffee at Tim Horton's, we're talking about cyclists with all the gear refusing to pay their own way because they're cheap skates and would rather leach off of government funding.

Sounds like you are going to these very same expensive coffee joints.

And guess what costs more. A car vs a bike? A car.

Guess what users infrastructure "costs more" and doesn't pay its way through "user fees"? Also cars.

 

[ntt1]

It shouldn't come as a surprise that cyclists are satisfied with the funding model for their bike paths. Cyclists on average are not low income or fixed income people but instead are a self centered higher income group that has the ability to make a contribution to their preferred transportation but are too tight to do so.[citation needed] Perhaps a better transportation funding strategy would be to make transportation free to everybody and fund it from revenue collected from income taxes.

Furthermore, the earlier tranches of funding dedicated to bike paths was used on some residential streets in places like Old Strathcona that did nothing to improve cycling safety.[citation needed] Most of those street are low traffic streets to begin with and bike paths were constructed to improve cyclists' cycling experience. Now cyclists like Constance want another $100M to take away the parking from more home owners[citation needed] so their cycling experience can improve?

Not sure why people are even bothering to engage when you're just throwing stuff like this out unsubstantiated.

 

[ChazYEG]

I vote liberal and own a bicycle and am willing to pay a user fee for using bicycle paths because I think it's fair. I go to coffee shops and see cyclists with their expensive bicycles drinking their expensive designer beverages. Again, this isn't kids in the northeast riding WalMart bicycles or the guy with a crap job drinking coffee at Tim Horton's, we're talking about cyclists with all the gear refusing to pay their own way because they're cheap skates and would rather leach off of government funding.

You haven't addresses our point: why do car users leech off government funding, then, since their "user fees" cover a very small percentage of the actual costs of car infrastructure?
And again, maybe those people you're saying don't ride bikes don't do so because of lacking infrastructure to make it safe and accessible... Maybe we should just do it like this: any part of infrastructure construction and maintenance not covered by user fees, for any transportation mode, will not be addressed... Maybe if roads are unsafe for motorized vehicles, less people will ride them and it'll be safer for other users to start taking up more space...

 

[ChazYEG]

I also laugh hard about "taking away parking from residents". As if street parking was a god-given right and the city, and taxpayers, had the obligation of subsidizing street parking for private vehicles. Want parking for your house? BUILD A GARAGE, or ar the very least, a driveway. And don't use it for storage.

 

[Out of Towner]

Homeowners weren't given the choice of paying a fee for street parking or having a bike path constructed in front of their homes. I don't know what their decisions may have been but if you insist that there should be a fee for street parking than there also needs to be a fee for bike path users. So pay up!

I didn't address your other point because it's not relevant. Vehicular traffic far exceeds bicycle traffic so its margin cost per user is lower but beyond that vehicular traffic has a much larger GDP generating parameter than cycling does.

 

[an_edmontonian]

Vehicular traffic far exceeds bicycle traffic so its margin cost per user is lower

Source?

 

[ChazYEG]

Homeowners weren't given the choice of paying a fee for street parking or having a bike path constructed in front of their homes. I don't know what their decisions may have been but if you insist that there should be a fee for street parking than there also needs to be a fee for bike path users. So pay up!

I didn't address your other point because it's not relevant. Vehicular traffic far exceeds bicycle traffic so its margin cost per user is lower but beyond that vehicular traffic has a much larger GDP generating parameter than cycling does.

You provide absolutely no source for the cost assumptions. Also, private, individual vehicular traffic is not a GDP generating parameter.

And no one is saying there should be a fee for street parking, but rather pointing out that we're all subsidizing stretches of public road for private use, and that this should not be something that guides urban design principles. Bike lanes benefit a substantially larger amount of individuals than subsidized, "free" private parking for people in front of their homes. Again, you want a guaranteed parking spot right by your front door? BUILD A GARAGE OR A DRIVEWAY. Otherwise, the general public benefit far outweights private needs, from a city planning standpoint.

 

[Out of Towner]

You provide absolutely no source for the cost assumptions. Also, private, individual vehicular traffic is not a GDP generating parameter.

And no one is saying there should be a fee for street parking, but rather pointing out that we're all subsidizing stretches of public road for private use, and that this should not be something that guides urban design principles. Bike lanes benefit a substantially larger amount of individuals than subsidized, "free" private parking for people in front of their homes. Again, you want a guaranteed parking spot right by your front door? BUILD A GARAGE OR A DRIVEWAY. Otherwise, the general public benefit far outweights private needs, from a city planning standpoint.

I don't have a government statistical source for you but you should be able to use your common sense to accept the validity of the assumption. If you needed to take a package across the city or say to Leduc. Would you use a bicycle or a vehicle? Presumable you'd use a vehicle because you should intuitively know that's it's the more efficient way of doing it. Therefore the GDP generated by using a vehicle is greater than by using a bicycle in virtually all instances other than short distance. And does some leisurely vehicular travel bring down the size of the parameter? Sure, but cyclists use roads too.

What is the source of your public benefit assumption? You're simple substituting the free parking benefit from a homeowner to a cyclist. You can't compare an individual homeowner to the aggregate of cyclists. You need to compare the aggregate number of homeowners to the aggregate number of cyclists if you want to assign value to the free parking. And if wish to assign value to the free parking than you also need to assign value to the cycling path and the benefit cyclists will receive.