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Dear Group, For the past week this debate and list of suggestions about bike counts and direction of spending for bike infrastructure avoids the real question of payments. I have not commented before on your local Madison bike issues and advocacy groups have made Madison into one of the few "biking cities" in the country. Yet there is a constant theme that "auto drivers" don't like bicyclists? And why might that be? Certainly most rode some type of bikes as children. They are pedestrians part of their current lives--so just why? They feel it is "us or they?" Certainly that is the general opinion expressed in this listserv--"us or they"--"us or those big bad SUVs." And all sorts of hockus-pokus can be put forth to show why bikes deserve all the spending they have gotten in the greater Madison area. Nevertheless--the bikes are a minority--an elite, if you will. So, why not have a real money raising license fee? Then bikes can put their heads up high and declare to autos that they are really on equal footing in the payments department. Why not an annual fee with fines for non compliance? There is still no gas tax money--but a comparable annual bike license fee would go along way toward making a case for bike infrastructure. >From the Web at the close of '07 was this:---- "[In Wisconsin, state law prohibits officials from collecting more in bike registration fees than it costs to run the registration program, said Arthur Ross, pedestrian-bike coordinator for the city of Madison. The best-known pay-off of that city's mandatory registration is also enabling police to return stolen bikes, Ross said. "Certainly, I would not want to see program funding tied to bike registration," Ross added. "We need a whole lot more money than were ever going to raise through bicycle registration." In Madison, about 20,000 bikes have valid registrations, said John Rider, bicycle registration coordinator. The $10 registration lasts four years. The program helps transportation planners, "get a handle on how many bicycles we have in the city so we can have some more say in trying to have bicycle facilities," Rider said. "It gives us a voice." It was pressure from cycling advocates that eventually led Minnesota lawmakers to repeal that state's registration program several years ago, said Anderson, the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. ]" ----------. . . .-------- Eric STRAWSER, Charles wrote:
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