The damage a bicyclist does to a road by riding on it, in comparison to that caused by large trucks, storms, and freeze-thaw cycles, is effectively zero. The "

The damage a bicyclist does to a road by riding on it, in comparison to that caused by large trucks, storms, and freeze-thaw cycles, is effectively zero. The "fair share" of a bicyclist for roads maintenance is thus zero, as we stopped chopping pennies up into farthings a long time ago. The fairest use tax for roads would be to charge passenger vehicles and road tractors annually, proportional to ("wet weight"/ 2 )^4, and separately charge the semi-trailers attached to the road tractors for each trip, proportional to ( loaded weight / 4 )^4 * trip distance. Anyone suggesting that bicycles cause any kind of burden to the roads themselves, rather than just to urban traffic patterns and traffic congestion, need a memorable explanation of the fourth-power rule. Which they can read with their remaining eye.~