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There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Etc. etc. Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. Lots of budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts from cars using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the price. While they don't emit carbon dioxide, they are just as deadly as normal cars. Also pollute more from the tires being heavier. Just as noisy. Need the same expensive roads. And as all cars they ruin the city.

chrisco255 4y ago
The point of road taxes is to pay for maintenance and expansion. Roads break down over time if you do not maintain them.
- techterrier 4y ago
  this is paid out of local taxation. Which is why pedestrians, cylists, equestrians, tractors, cows and ducks are allowed to used the road. There is no such thing as road tax.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - blibble 4y ago
    trunk roads and motorways are definitely not paid out of local taxation
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    Dunno how it works in UK, but in US, there are local roads, state roads, and federal roads. There are also local, state, and federal gas taxes that vary by jurisdiction. The funds from these gas taxes are used to finance new highway and roadway construction and maintenance of existing roads. Sometimes, a special tax is levied at the local level for specific local roadway projects. But the big infrastructure projects are almost entirely paid for by gas taxes. Either way, the point of the tax has never been to "punish pollution".
    - zip1234 4y ago
      > the big infrastructure projects are almost entirely paid for by gas taxes. About 50% is probably correct: http://www.financingtransportation.org/funding_financing/funding/ http://www.financingtransportation.org/funding_financing/fun...
  - asdff 4y ago
    There is such thing as a road tax and not all roads allow cows and ducks and lions and bears. Note the sign on the highway onramp that says something like "no pedestrians or cyclists" and the fact that every car on the road has to pay a yearly fee in order to not be impounded by the local government for neglecting to pay for fees that go on to maintain the roads.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Roads break down over time primarily as a function of vehicle weight. Most road taxes (especially gas taxes) are poor proxies for vehicle weight taxes. It's probably time to reconsider vehicle weight taxes.
gpmcadam 4y ago
It's a combination. Revenues gathered via road tax have a provision for older/more polluting cars so you pay less the newer your vehicle, essentially. Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of highways, though. Local roads are funded by council tax, so this probably dispells the anti-cycling argument because presumably the cyclists do pay council tax (unless they're on motorways which is another issue.)
- techterrier 4y ago
  motorways, not highways
  - gpmcadam 4y ago
    No, it's highways because not all highways (major roads and motorways) are motorways. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-england https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-england
- semanticist 4y ago
  > Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of highways, though. Only in the sense that some of all tax money is used in that way - VED just gets pooled with all tax income, none of it is 'ring fenced' for any specific purpose. That's why the idea of 'road tax' is so annoying, since it implies it's to be used for a specific purpose.
  - efaref 4y ago
    "Road tax" is a _tax_ you have to pay in order to use the _road_. It's the most natural name for it, which is why people call it that. Despite the words they use, it's not a vehicle tax: you can own a vehicle without paying it as long as you declare that you will not use the vehicle _on_the_road_ (a.k.a., make a Statutory Off Road Notification). It's a tax for using the roads. A road tax. That the government don't ring-fence it to use on road maintenance is irrelevant.
    - 4y ago
martin-adams 4y ago
It's very odd they used the term Road Tax. It's always been known as Vehicle Tax for the very reason you've pointed out. Hence why you don't need to pay tax to ride a bicycle on the road. The other area they are losing out not mentioned in the article is Benefit in Kind tax for EVs used as company cars. At some point, that will also need to end and be more in alignment with ICE vehicles.
- techterrier 4y ago
  It's a handy dog whistle so we know they are part of the car lobby edit: spelling
  - blibble 4y ago
    or it could simply be that the commonly used term for Vehicle Excise Duty is "road tax" (even if it's technically incorrect) not everything is a conspiracy
    - techterrier 4y ago
      commonly used by people who disingenuously use it's etymology to imply that all 'road users' (by which they mean cyclists) rather than 'vehicle users' should pay it
      - blibble 4y ago
        I don't see anything in the article that suggests the author wants that to happen? these hysterical responses say more about you then the people you're demonising
        techterrier 4y ago
        I dont think a carsalesman is going to feel overly demonised by being reffered to as part of the car lobby. He does know better than to conflate road and vehicle tax however.
belorn 4y ago
bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear and tear comes from nature, water in particular, which mean wear and tear isn't based on usage. When it come to tire pollution those would be better taxed on the tires themselves. Bike tires tend to be much much smaller than cars so the taxation wouldn't be that big of a deal to cyclists.
- 7952 4y ago
  I think road wear is axle weight to the fourth power. So lorries are massively more damaging than cars. And cars are massively more damaging than bikes. Anecdotally the issue with bike and pedestrian paths is intruding vegetation which slowly narrows the width.
  - AnthonyMouse 4y ago
    It's not just a matter of "massively more" -- with those numbers the damage from anything other than large commercial vehicles is a rounding error which, if accounted for proportionally, would cost more money to collect than the amount collected.
    - brippalcharrid 4y ago
      It's the fourth power of axle load according to the AAHSO report (https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-cyclelicious/ https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-...) A 30-ton 5-axle HGV would be 6 tons per axle, a BMW 7-Series would be 1 ton per axle, and a heavy cyclist on a heavy bicycle would work out to around 0.05 tons per axle, so while a car might cause ~1/1000th of the wear of a heavy truck, a bicycle would cause less than 1/100000th of the wear that is caused by a car, and that's before you consider the wear that's caused according to the speed that a vehicle is traveling (it is roughly linear). So while it might conceivably be possible to tax motorists according to the level of damage that they cause to roads (with trucks paying far more than they do now, and with revenues not exceeding the costs of collection), it certainly wouldn't be possible to tax cyclists.
analog31 4y ago
>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fee. We're not allowed to ride on the Interstates, and we tend to avoid "big" roads for safety / comfort reasons. My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking. Which is itself a net subsidy for all sorts of other economic activity. It's subsidies all the way down.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Indeed - if heavy trucking is subsidised then eventually the prices you're paying for something are lower.
- wil421 4y ago
  > Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Not true for a lot of states. Property tax is not used for roads. Georgia pays for roads using gas taxes and road use fees like registration (tolls contribute a very small amount). Florida is similar but they are much more toll heavy. Alabama is similar as too. All 3 states are in the top 10 roads in America[1]. I believe Georgia plans to charge higher registration fees for EVs at some point. [1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-condition...
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
redeeman 4y ago
so perhaps its also time for the government to admit that the prior taxes didnt have ANYTHING to do with environment, but just a way to justify money grabbing to spend on their own worthy causes?
- unglaublich 4y ago
  Cars are a huge burden on health, safety, environment and quality of life. It has never been a secret that governments tax cars to subsidize causes that should partially compensate the indirect damage that cars do to their countries.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    We saw this play out with the money from tobacco settlements a few decades ago; states see sin taxes as a windfall that can substitute for sustainable budgeting.
- matsemann 4y ago
  No, it's the opposite. You don't want people to drive because of the environment, health, noise, road "accidents" killing people, how it destroys cities etc. So the taxes are a direct incentive to find alternative modes of travel.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Not really. They exist because cars are required. If we all became able to live our lives purely with cycling then cycling would be taxed.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    step 1: ICE cars are bad for the environment! we must add taxes step 2: ICE cars are bad, electric cars good. We remove taxes for electric cars ... too many people get electric cars ... step 3: its time to start taxing electric cars... reasons! translation: governments likes to take money from its citizens that it can spend on whatever it deems worthy, and will happily come up with a reason, sometimes justified, sometimes not.
Robotbeat 4y ago
The “pollute more from the tires being heavier” is a myth, by the way. There was an article that circulated claiming this, but they never actually measured the tire pollution of electric cars, just extrapolated from ICE cars with really terrible and ultimately false arguments. Electric cars tend to use low rolling resistance tires (potentially less wear… if you’re experiencing less rolling resistance, that means less energy ends up being used to produce wear, so less wear occurs… in part due to geometric effects and partly due to composition of the tires). Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, plus improved traction control (and the more gentle regenerative braking) means less wheel slippage and wear. And it assumes ICE cars are operating at full emissions-control mode which is also untrue especially on startup or in cold weather or if using diesel. It also assumes tire wear mass is all minute particles of the same problematic effects of ICE exhaust particles, which is a bad assumption for multiple reasons (for one, it ignores empirical measurements of particle sizes), and it ignores gaseous emissions entirely in the calculation, many of which are very problematic like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides of various types, components of gasoline such as benzene and xylene and toluene, ozone (a major component of smog), etc. It also ignores the near absence of break wear in electric cars, thus the absence of silica dust (or iron oxide dust, or whatever the brakes and the rotors are made of, etc). In short, it is misinformation.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, Seriously, this meme needs to die. A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340, and the model 3 is hundreds of pounds lighter than an SUV like the BMW X3. Batteries are heavy, but so are gas engines & transmissions.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    > A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340 Sure, but its also 500-1200lbs heavier than a Civic depending on the trims of each which has very similar utility to an M3 and is much closer in TCO to a model 3 than a 340 or an X3 is. We shouldn't be having our cake and eating it too by saying "electric cars are more expensive but the TCO so much lower than ICE that its worth it" and then make comparisons to ICE vehicles at the MSRP of the EV.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
It's a vehicle tax. It's depending on emissions at the moment as a way to encourage vehicles with low/no emissions but there is no reason for EV to keep being exempt. The issue in term of tax revenue is fuel duty and VAT on fuel. I'm suspecting that once transition is advanced enough they'll find ways to add tax on charging points/electricity used for charging, or an actual road tax on mileage or whatnot.
innocentoldguy 4y ago
> This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. What does owning a car have to do with it? If you own two cars, or a car and a scooter, you still have to pay taxes for both to be on the road, don’t you? EDIT: I forgot to mention, where I live taxes aren’t collected as a “fee for polluting.” They’re to keep roads maintained and improve them. This often includes special bike lanes that bicyclists do nothing to pay for.
- matsemann 4y ago
  That's my point, though. When I'm on a bike and someone shouts at me to get off the road because I don't pay for it and they do, they are wrong. I pay the same as they do, I just choose to use my bike every day to commute.
  - innocentoldguy 4y ago
    But that isn't what you said. You said that people who were complaining that bicyclists don't pay their fair share for the roads are wrong because most bicyclists own a car too. I responded to that argument and not the moved goal post you're presenting here.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      I have honestly no idea what you're trying to convey. I didn't move any goalpost, I tried to restate my point since you missed it completely. Don't argue in bad faith, please.
pif 4y ago
> There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. It is not what you call it, but what you spend it on.
- youngtaff 4y ago
  And it’s part of general taxation… Roads are funded partly out of local taxes, and partly out of general taxes - there’s no hypothecation of ‘road tax’ paying for roads
nemo44x 4y ago
> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really dislike bikes - they get in the way of people trying to get somewhere.
- techterrier 4y ago
  hell hath no fury like a mildly inconvenienced motorist
  - prawn 4y ago
    You could spend eternity studying how some people feel aggressively about cyclists. Would be great to understand the crux of it. Fairness (road taxes), jealousy (skipping lights, getting ahead of traffic), shame (should I be exercising too?), otherness.
    - supertrope 4y ago
      It seems to mostly be annoyance that they have to share the road. Cyclists aren't zooming along at 44MPH on a 35MPH road. Other motorists are also in their way. Automobile commercials always depict an idyllic empty road just for you.
      - prawn 4y ago
        Not sure it's just an annoyance at sharing the road - like you said, there are other motorists. You don't see epic forum rage-discussions about garbage trucks holding up traffic, street-sweepers, buses, parking lanes that revert at rush hour. Those get discussed, but there always seems to be a special rage reserved by some people for cyclists - the quiet, small road users. I think you could explain a lot about a large segment of people by isolating and understanding this. If I'm held up by a cyclist, I think "Good on them, they're braver and fitter than me."
ehnto 4y ago
In Australia and I imagine the UK, infrastructure is paid for by the municipalities from their own budgets, a portion of which is granted to them from the federal government. Larger projects are usually taken on by the state. These budgets come out of general tax revenue, which is paid by everyone via GST and income tax. So cyclists absolutely pay, and in many many cases, they're paying to build infrastructure they don't even use. The unfair burden usually goes toward the cyclist, who's historically been shortchanged on infrastructure for cycling. Registration goes toward running the registration apparatus, not into infrastructure. That's another misconception. The other contribution is from fuel sales taxes/excises, and that goes into general tax revenue as well, so is not explicitly set aside for road projects. Negating the potential income from fuel sales taxes, is all the fossil fuel subsidies, what once was 15bil income, after subsidies of 12bil, is now just 3billion in income from fuel taxes. So the money comes in from the consumer, and goes straight out to the fossil fuel industry through industry fuel tax credits. Absolutely bullshit, but it also means there's not much left of that fuel tax income to pay for infrastructure. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/FossilFuelTaxes#_Toc313957069 https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart.... Ultimately a cyclist will pay the same amount of tax, minus the fuel taxes, and get just a scrap of that tax spent back on cycling.
DrBazza 4y ago
> There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? Vehicle Excise Duty since 1920 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty Road funding in the UK is just from the general pot of tax money. There are a lot of anti-cyclist types in the UK that always incorrectly (or ironically, correctly) claim that cyclists don't pay road tax (no one does) and therefore shouldn't use the road, even though just about every cyclist is an adult that pays UK tax. I certainly expect the UK, and every other country to tax EVs by mileage within a decade, and additionally toll charge on major routes, almost certainly via cameras (to also fine you for speeding), or require all cars to have a GPS blackbox (which let's face it, isn't expensive now).
standardUser 4y ago
"Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. " Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.
- Originami 4y ago
  Road tax needs to be morphed into road-usage tax, based on time of day, location, axle weight, and distance. It should be prohibitively expensive to use congested freeways and city streets during peak hours, but free at all other times. Road expansion is justified based on peaks of usage - so by smoothing out these peaks, we can save significantly on the need to build more roads. Trip length can also scale non-linearly based on congestion: 10-20% more cars than capacity can result in 50% longer trips.
- megablast 4y ago
  Why?? EVs aren’t good for the environment at all. Why push for them?? Why are we continuously subsidising the car industry?
josefresco 4y ago
> Lots of budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts from cars using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the price. Citation needed.
- matsemann 4y ago
  Income from toll roads in Oslo was 1 billion NOK lower per year than budgeted, after the electric car boom and their free/subsidized passing. https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/vil-fjerne-bompengerabatten-for-elbilene-1.15622910 https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/vil-fjerne-bompengerabatten-f... That alone almost collapsed the whole Oslo city government, actually. As they had to negotiate with the national government and neighbor districts on how various infrastructure projects could be finished. Was quite a big deal this spring.

chrisco255 4y ago

The point of road taxes is to pay for maintenance and expansion. Roads break down over time if you do not maintain them.

techterrier 4y ago
this is paid out of local taxation. Which is why pedestrians, cylists, equestrians, tractors, cows and ducks are allowed to used the road. There is no such thing as road tax.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blibble 4y ago
  trunk roads and motorways are definitely not paid out of local taxation
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Dunno how it works in UK, but in US, there are local roads, state roads, and federal roads. There are also local, state, and federal gas taxes that vary by jurisdiction. The funds from these gas taxes are used to finance new highway and roadway construction and maintenance of existing roads. Sometimes, a special tax is levied at the local level for specific local roadway projects. But the big infrastructure projects are almost entirely paid for by gas taxes. Either way, the point of the tax has never been to "punish pollution".
  - zip1234 4y ago
    > the big infrastructure projects are almost entirely paid for by gas taxes. About 50% is probably correct: http://www.financingtransportation.org/funding_financing/funding/ http://www.financingtransportation.org/funding_financing/fun...
- asdff 4y ago
  There is such thing as a road tax and not all roads allow cows and ducks and lions and bears. Note the sign on the highway onramp that says something like "no pedestrians or cyclists" and the fact that every car on the road has to pay a yearly fee in order to not be impounded by the local government for neglecting to pay for fees that go on to maintain the roads.
WorldMaker 4y ago
Roads break down over time primarily as a function of vehicle weight. Most road taxes (especially gas taxes) are poor proxies for vehicle weight taxes. It's probably time to reconsider vehicle weight taxes.

gpmcadam 4y ago

It's a combination. Revenues gathered via road tax have a provision for older/more polluting cars so you pay less the newer your vehicle, essentially. Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of highways, though. Local roads are funded by council tax, so this probably dispells the anti-cycling argument because presumably the cyclists do pay council tax (unless they're on motorways which is another issue.)

techterrier 4y ago
motorways, not highways
- gpmcadam 4y ago
  No, it's highways because not all highways (major roads and motorways) are motorways. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-england https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-england
semanticist 4y ago
> Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of highways, though. Only in the sense that some of all tax money is used in that way - VED just gets pooled with all tax income, none of it is 'ring fenced' for any specific purpose. That's why the idea of 'road tax' is so annoying, since it implies it's to be used for a specific purpose.
- efaref 4y ago
  "Road tax" is a _tax_ you have to pay in order to use the _road_. It's the most natural name for it, which is why people call it that. Despite the words they use, it's not a vehicle tax: you can own a vehicle without paying it as long as you declare that you will not use the vehicle _on_the_road_ (a.k.a., make a Statutory Off Road Notification). It's a tax for using the roads. A road tax. That the government don't ring-fence it to use on road maintenance is irrelevant.
  - 4y ago

martin-adams 4y ago

It's very odd they used the term Road Tax. It's always been known as Vehicle Tax for the very reason you've pointed out. Hence why you don't need to pay tax to ride a bicycle on the road. The other area they are losing out not mentioned in the article is Benefit in Kind tax for EVs used as company cars. At some point, that will also need to end and be more in alignment with ICE vehicles.

techterrier 4y ago
It's a handy dog whistle so we know they are part of the car lobby edit: spelling
- blibble 4y ago
  or it could simply be that the commonly used term for Vehicle Excise Duty is "road tax" (even if it's technically incorrect) not everything is a conspiracy
  - techterrier 4y ago
    commonly used by people who disingenuously use it's etymology to imply that all 'road users' (by which they mean cyclists) rather than 'vehicle users' should pay it
    - blibble 4y ago
      I don't see anything in the article that suggests the author wants that to happen? these hysterical responses say more about you then the people you're demonising
      - techterrier 4y ago
        I dont think a carsalesman is going to feel overly demonised by being reffered to as part of the car lobby. He does know better than to conflate road and vehicle tax however.

belorn 4y ago

bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear and tear comes from nature, water in particular, which mean wear and tear isn't based on usage. When it come to tire pollution those would be better taxed on the tires themselves. Bike tires tend to be much much smaller than cars so the taxation wouldn't be that big of a deal to cyclists.

7952 4y ago
I think road wear is axle weight to the fourth power. So lorries are massively more damaging than cars. And cars are massively more damaging than bikes. Anecdotally the issue with bike and pedestrian paths is intruding vegetation which slowly narrows the width.
- AnthonyMouse 4y ago
  It's not just a matter of "massively more" -- with those numbers the damage from anything other than large commercial vehicles is a rounding error which, if accounted for proportionally, would cost more money to collect than the amount collected.
  - brippalcharrid 4y ago
    It's the fourth power of axle load according to the AAHSO report (https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-cyclelicious/ https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-...) A 30-ton 5-axle HGV would be 6 tons per axle, a BMW 7-Series would be 1 ton per axle, and a heavy cyclist on a heavy bicycle would work out to around 0.05 tons per axle, so while a car might cause ~1/1000th of the wear of a heavy truck, a bicycle would cause less than 1/100000th of the wear that is caused by a car, and that's before you consider the wear that's caused according to the speed that a vehicle is traveling (it is roughly linear). So while it might conceivably be possible to tax motorists according to the level of damage that they cause to roads (with trucks paying far more than they do now, and with revenues not exceeding the costs of collection), it certainly wouldn't be possible to tax cyclists.

analog31 4y ago

>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fee. We're not allowed to ride on the Interstates, and we tend to avoid "big" roads for safety / comfort reasons. My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking. Which is itself a net subsidy for all sorts of other economic activity. It's subsidies all the way down.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Indeed - if heavy trucking is subsidised then eventually the prices you're paying for something are lower.
wil421 4y ago
> Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Not true for a lot of states. Property tax is not used for roads. Georgia pays for roads using gas taxes and road use fees like registration (tolls contribute a very small amount). Florida is similar but they are much more toll heavy. Alabama is similar as too. All 3 states are in the top 10 roads in America[1]. I believe Georgia plans to charge higher registration fees for EVs at some point. [1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-condition...
- Robotbeat 4y ago

redeeman 4y ago

so perhaps its also time for the government to admit that the prior taxes didnt have ANYTHING to do with environment, but just a way to justify money grabbing to spend on their own worthy causes?

unglaublich 4y ago
Cars are a huge burden on health, safety, environment and quality of life. It has never been a secret that governments tax cars to subsidize causes that should partially compensate the indirect damage that cars do to their countries.
- mbg721 4y ago
  We saw this play out with the money from tobacco settlements a few decades ago; states see sin taxes as a windfall that can substitute for sustainable budgeting.
matsemann 4y ago
No, it's the opposite. You don't want people to drive because of the environment, health, noise, road "accidents" killing people, how it destroys cities etc. So the taxes are a direct incentive to find alternative modes of travel.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Not really. They exist because cars are required. If we all became able to live our lives purely with cycling then cycling would be taxed.
- redeeman 4y ago
  step 1: ICE cars are bad for the environment! we must add taxes step 2: ICE cars are bad, electric cars good. We remove taxes for electric cars ... too many people get electric cars ... step 3: its time to start taxing electric cars... reasons! translation: governments likes to take money from its citizens that it can spend on whatever it deems worthy, and will happily come up with a reason, sometimes justified, sometimes not.

Robotbeat 4y ago

The “pollute more from the tires being heavier” is a myth, by the way. There was an article that circulated claiming this, but they never actually measured the tire pollution of electric cars, just extrapolated from ICE cars with really terrible and ultimately false arguments. Electric cars tend to use low rolling resistance tires (potentially less wear… if you’re experiencing less rolling resistance, that means less energy ends up being used to produce wear, so less wear occurs… in part due to geometric effects and partly due to composition of the tires). Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, plus improved traction control (and the more gentle regenerative braking) means less wheel slippage and wear. And it assumes ICE cars are operating at full emissions-control mode which is also untrue especially on startup or in cold weather or if using diesel. It also assumes tire wear mass is all minute particles of the same problematic effects of ICE exhaust particles, which is a bad assumption for multiple reasons (for one, it ignores empirical measurements of particle sizes), and it ignores gaseous emissions entirely in the calculation, many of which are very problematic like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides of various types, components of gasoline such as benzene and xylene and toluene, ozone (a major component of smog), etc. It also ignores the near absence of break wear in electric cars, thus the absence of silica dust (or iron oxide dust, or whatever the brakes and the rotors are made of, etc). In short, it is misinformation.

dahfizz 4y ago
> Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, Seriously, this meme needs to die. A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340, and the model 3 is hundreds of pounds lighter than an SUV like the BMW X3. Batteries are heavy, but so are gas engines & transmissions.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  > A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340 Sure, but its also 500-1200lbs heavier than a Civic depending on the trims of each which has very similar utility to an M3 and is much closer in TCO to a model 3 than a 340 or an X3 is. We shouldn't be having our cake and eating it too by saying "electric cars are more expensive but the TCO so much lower than ICE that its worth it" and then make comparisons to ICE vehicles at the MSRP of the EV.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

It's a vehicle tax. It's depending on emissions at the moment as a way to encourage vehicles with low/no emissions but there is no reason for EV to keep being exempt. The issue in term of tax revenue is fuel duty and VAT on fuel. I'm suspecting that once transition is advanced enough they'll find ways to add tax on charging points/electricity used for charging, or an actual road tax on mileage or whatnot.

innocentoldguy 4y ago

> This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. What does owning a car have to do with it? If you own two cars, or a car and a scooter, you still have to pay taxes for both to be on the road, don’t you? EDIT: I forgot to mention, where I live taxes aren’t collected as a “fee for polluting.” They’re to keep roads maintained and improve them. This often includes special bike lanes that bicyclists do nothing to pay for.

matsemann 4y ago
That's my point, though. When I'm on a bike and someone shouts at me to get off the road because I don't pay for it and they do, they are wrong. I pay the same as they do, I just choose to use my bike every day to commute.
- innocentoldguy 4y ago
  But that isn't what you said. You said that people who were complaining that bicyclists don't pay their fair share for the roads are wrong because most bicyclists own a car too. I responded to that argument and not the moved goal post you're presenting here.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    I have honestly no idea what you're trying to convey. I didn't move any goalpost, I tried to restate my point since you missed it completely. Don't argue in bad faith, please.

pif 4y ago

> There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. It is not what you call it, but what you spend it on.

youngtaff 4y ago
And it’s part of general taxation… Roads are funded partly out of local taxes, and partly out of general taxes - there’s no hypothecation of ‘road tax’ paying for roads

nemo44x 4y ago

> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really dislike bikes - they get in the way of people trying to get somewhere.

techterrier 4y ago
hell hath no fury like a mildly inconvenienced motorist
- prawn 4y ago
  You could spend eternity studying how some people feel aggressively about cyclists. Would be great to understand the crux of it. Fairness (road taxes), jealousy (skipping lights, getting ahead of traffic), shame (should I be exercising too?), otherness.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    It seems to mostly be annoyance that they have to share the road. Cyclists aren't zooming along at 44MPH on a 35MPH road. Other motorists are also in their way. Automobile commercials always depict an idyllic empty road just for you.
    - prawn 4y ago
      Not sure it's just an annoyance at sharing the road - like you said, there are other motorists. You don't see epic forum rage-discussions about garbage trucks holding up traffic, street-sweepers, buses, parking lanes that revert at rush hour. Those get discussed, but there always seems to be a special rage reserved by some people for cyclists - the quiet, small road users. I think you could explain a lot about a large segment of people by isolating and understanding this. If I'm held up by a cyclist, I think "Good on them, they're braver and fitter than me."

ehnto 4y ago

In Australia and I imagine the UK, infrastructure is paid for by the municipalities from their own budgets, a portion of which is granted to them from the federal government. Larger projects are usually taken on by the state. These budgets come out of general tax revenue, which is paid by everyone via GST and income tax. So cyclists absolutely pay, and in many many cases, they're paying to build infrastructure they don't even use. The unfair burden usually goes toward the cyclist, who's historically been shortchanged on infrastructure for cycling. Registration goes toward running the registration apparatus, not into infrastructure. That's another misconception. The other contribution is from fuel sales taxes/excises, and that goes into general tax revenue as well, so is not explicitly set aside for road projects. Negating the potential income from fuel sales taxes, is all the fossil fuel subsidies, what once was 15bil income, after subsidies of 12bil, is now just 3billion in income from fuel taxes. So the money comes in from the consumer, and goes straight out to the fossil fuel industry through industry fuel tax credits. Absolutely bullshit, but it also means there's not much left of that fuel tax income to pay for infrastructure. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/FossilFuelTaxes#_Toc313957069 https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart.... Ultimately a cyclist will pay the same amount of tax, minus the fuel taxes, and get just a scrap of that tax spent back on cycling.

DrBazza 4y ago

> There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? Vehicle Excise Duty since 1920 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty Road funding in the UK is just from the general pot of tax money. There are a lot of anti-cyclist types in the UK that always incorrectly (or ironically, correctly) claim that cyclists don't pay road tax (no one does) and therefore shouldn't use the road, even though just about every cyclist is an adult that pays UK tax. I certainly expect the UK, and every other country to tax EVs by mileage within a decade, and additionally toll charge on major routes, almost certainly via cameras (to also fine you for speeding), or require all cars to have a GPS blackbox (which let's face it, isn't expensive now).

standardUser 4y ago

"Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. " Maybe in Norway, and only Norway. Every other nation should be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.

Originami 4y ago
Road tax needs to be morphed into road-usage tax, based on time of day, location, axle weight, and distance. It should be prohibitively expensive to use congested freeways and city streets during peak hours, but free at all other times. Road expansion is justified based on peaks of usage - so by smoothing out these peaks, we can save significantly on the need to build more roads. Trip length can also scale non-linearly based on congestion: 10-20% more cars than capacity can result in 50% longer trips.
megablast 4y ago
Why?? EVs aren’t good for the environment at all. Why push for them?? Why are we continuously subsidising the car industry?

josefresco 4y ago

> Lots of budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts from cars using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the price. Citation needed.

matsemann 4y ago
Income from toll roads in Oslo was 1 billion NOK lower per year than budgeted, after the electric car boom and their free/subsidized passing. https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/vil-fjerne-bompengerabatten-for-elbilene-1.15622910 https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/vil-fjerne-bompengerabatten-f... That alone almost collapsed the whole Oslo city government, actually. As they had to negotiate with the national government and neighbor districts on how various infrastructure projects could be finished. Was quite a big deal this spring.