Hi Robert: Thanks for your response. My comments about Escalade and Hummer drivers was part tongue-in-cheek and part serious.
I think that it is ridiculous - and ridiculously wasteful - for people to drive around in motorized ego trips - gigantic or otherwise. As a person who does a lot of bicycling on highways, I find the attitudes of many who drive monster vehicles like Hummers and tricked-out pickup trucks to be very intimidating. However, people who drive Priuses and other relatively compact, high-mileage vehicles demand just as much highway capacity per mile while in motion, and the same amount parking capacity when they stop. But because they buy much less fuel, they don't fund this capacity. Hence property taxes are usually used to make up the difference - especially at the county and municipal levels. As for land use, the story we love to tell ourselves is that poor planning is the cause of automobile addiction. Great! Poor us; we're the victims; so let's all sit around and wait for the "good" architect-gods to arrive on the scene and build a Mode-Choice Eden for us. In the meantime, let's tell each other we don't have any choice but to continue to drive. That won't ruffle anyone's feathers! I'm sorry, but I want us to tell ourselves another story - i.e. if we want "walkable" and "bicycle-friendly" where we already live, a lot more of us need to walk and bicycle a lot more often...WHERE WE ALREADY LIVE. This means not waiting for miracles; not honoring excuses and "reasons"; not expecting the transformation to be easy or quick or risk-free. The name of this story is, "Habitat Will Follow Behavior". It is a story where ordinary human beings are CAUSE of the built ecosystem, not the effect. I must say that thus far, this message has not been well-received where I live - i.e. the Village of Oregon. People here tell me the problem is the story. I believe the problem is that this story won't catch on until there is more than one person telling it. Hans -----Original Message----- From: robert paolino [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:49 AM To: Hans Noeldner Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Bikies] Freeloading on the highways On Wed, 2011-03-30 at 12:47 -0500, Hans Noeldner wrote: [snip] > Here in the USA we don’t even call it cheating when people drive > high-mileage vehicles…and thus don’t pay their fair share of fuel > taxes for the highways, roads, and streets they use. So next time you > drive your Prius over a road or bridge which is being repaired, thank > an Escalade or Hummer driver. (WHAT!?!? Did Hans just say that?) I'm sorry, am I missing something? Why would someone driving a high-mileage (I assume in this context that you mean high fuel economy) motor vehicle not be paying something resembling a fair share relative to a Hummer or Chevy Subdivision?? Hummer weighs more, therefore uses more fuel, therefore pays higher tax as some partial compensation for causing more wear on the roads. Isn't that at least approximately fair (one could argue that the additional fuel and fuel tax isn't _enough_ to compensate for the ills of a Hummer) that the Hummer driver would pay more for the greater wear on the roads than caused by a smaller and lighter MV? The other part that Hans writes about poor land use planning and, I would add, lack of adequate and affordable public transit, is mostly on target, but the initial comment strikes me as rather odd. Why _shouldn't_ the behemoth drivers pay more in motor fuel taxes than the econobox drivers? If your vehicle weighs less and, therefore, causes less wear/damage, how is is it "cheating" to have to waste less in natural resources and pay less in fuel tax than the monster trucks? _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
