Quite a common argument is the idea that cyclists should pay road tax because they use the road.
From the perspective of an economist, you could make a convincing argument that people who cycle to work should not pay tax, but be given a subsidy by the government. This is why.
Cycling creates positive externalities (Benefits to the rest of society, not felt by the personal users). This means the social benefit of cycling is greater than the private benefit. If I cycle, other people benefit in the form of less congestion, less pollution, healthier society. But, these external benefits are not taken into consideration by someone cycling. When weighing up whether to cycle or drive, we think of the the private cost, the downside of getting wet, the probability of getting run over against the benefits of lower costs, getting to work quicker, and keeping fit. Generally We don’t think “I’ll cycle to help do my bit in reducing the pressure on city centre car parking spaces.”
Cycling has many positive externalities including:
- Less Pollution. Bikes don’t pollute, cars and buses do. Given the importance of global warming and rise in respiratory disease, cleaner air is a significant benefit to the rest of society, More people cycling means cleaner air for all.
- Less congestion. If more people cycled, there would be less pressure on road and parking space, especially in city centres.
- Cyclists are moving traffic calming measures. Councils find traffic calming measures significantly reduce accidents. They reduce speed and make motorists think. When a motorist approaches a cyclist it forces them to get out of cruise control mode and (in theory) think of a careful way to pass them. In theory this should lead to safer roads.
- Cyclists don’t damage the road. Roads need repairing frequently because they soon get worn down. However, the roads are not worn down by 10kg bicycles, but 2 tonne + lorries. Therefore, it is not cyclists who should pay the external cost of road repair. Lorries not only create the cost but also create the time and inconvenience of road works. This is a major external cost and is a reason why HGV should pay higher road tax. If heavy goods vehicles paid the true social cost, it would encourage more freight to be transported by rail not road. Society would benefit from a more efficient transport system.
- Cycling Reduces Cost of NHS. Obesity and lack of physical exercise creates strain on the resources of the National Health Service. By keeping fit, cyclist are less of a burden on government spending.
Cars should pay road tax and petrol tax because they create negative externalities; the social cost is greater than the private cost. The tax system is a way of making motorists pay the true social cost.
I would argue that lorries and heavy goods vehicles should pay extra taxes because they create the most negative externalities and the social cost is higher than driving.
If cyclists were subsidised it would encourage more people to take up cycling to work. This would help city centre transport systems and the quality of life.
Most cyclists should most certainly not pay road tax as they only use a tiny fraction of the road.
However, sanctimonious c*nts with shaved legs, lycra shorts, £1000 racers and yellow sunglasses with their nasty little bottoms stuck up in the air while toiling up a 2 mile long hill bang in the middle of the road with a mile-long tailback of frustrated motorists behind them should definately pay road tax as they appear to think that they need as much road as a car.
The road is for transport, not for people to practice their sport on for free. If these people even pulled over every 5 minutes to let all the motorists past, cyclists would have a much better name and get less flak from motorists. Being a cyclist and a motorcyclist and a car driver, I know what gets my back up. I know the kind of motorcyclists that give us bikers a bad name too, and they are just as bad, using the road as a racetrack.
If you fit the above description (and I am sure that many of you do), why not f*ck off to a velodrome and I’ll f*ck off to a track day on my motorbike. In fact I’d better just f*ck off. Probably.
I work in engineering and sometimes on behalf of the council. we spend many hours designing and building cycleway to be use by cyclist only not cars or horses or any other vehicle, yet i am pay for them. why should the cyclists be the only ones who contribute to the maintaining of a facility that they are going to use. i pay to use the road effectively with my road tax.
what if you just cycle in the summer months and the cycle is left in a garage around 10 months of the year..Is it fair to charge tax on this ?……….. It would never work…I know people who cycle maybe 3 times a year…how on earth could you maintain a tax system on that?
Most of my cycling is done on tracks and specialized routes avoiding roads as much as possible….. I own both a car and a bike and to consider tax on such a environmentally friendly machine…well…….ridiculous!
‘Road tax’ doesn’t exist. Road building and maintenance is paid for by general taxation and in the case of most roads, that taxation is council tax. VED (vehicle exise duty; your tax disc) and fuel duty go into the finances of the Treasury; you could say that duty on cigarettes, &c. pays for our roads.
It’s so funny, whenever you hear this argument just how much you motorists whine about you wonderful cars.
Get out of your biscuit tin and get on a bike. You’ll be so much happier.
@paul bennett
WRONG
Non-Motorists pay more since they are subsidising the cost of Motorists (30p mile/£40 year are usually mentioned.
This is because VED pays for the emissions monitoring and not the roads. VED could never ever afford to pay for the road maintenance.
Road building/maintenance is paid for out of all taxes, VAT, Council Tax etc… so we all pay for them, even if we don’t use a car/the roads.
And how much more does it cost to build infrastructure for a car vs for a cyclist… 1000000x more (okay, exaggeration).
Remember, you pay this because you agreed to it and signed your life away when you got your driving licence.
@realist
I disagree that cyclists should, but I can understand the arguments for not bothering to have a “tax” system for cars.
Although VED is for monitoring emissions and various things, I rather keep it. If you can afford to “waste” money on a huge engine, quite honestly you should be able to afford the higher VED rates.
It also makes it easy for the police to find the type of people that avoid paying it, since someone that hasn’t paid it, probably doesn’t have insurance or an MOT either.
If cyclists use the roads either they should pay road tax OR road tax should be scrapped for cars as well given that practically NONE of the extortionate amounts raised is even spent on the roads.
Would you like this to apply to horse riders, dog walkers and hikers as well then?
Aren’t we forgetting that the roads that cyclist’s use for nothing are paid for from a fraction of the money raised from the pockets of car drivers of this country?
I think road tax for cyclists is the most stupidest idea ever thought up the goverment keeps telling us to stop using cars and use public transport cycle or walk to work to reduce pollution on the road then the next thing they do is announce this stupid harebrained idea
if the tax is introduced one of two things will happen either all cyclists will refuse to pay the tax enmasse or people will give up cycling and recycling centre scrap metal skips will be overflowing with unwanted bikes plus bike shops(independent bike dealers not the likes of halfords who sell bikes) will close down causing unemployment
i agree with pat guide gordon brown can take this idea and shove it up his backside
maybe if there were mass protests by cyclists this would prove the point as an example the cycling for scotland event from glasgow to edinburgh had 7000 cyclists including the transport secretary yet this item is released to the media on the same day this event takes place rather strange dont you think?
Absolutley NO Road Tax for cyclists.
Cycling is one of the last freedoms left in Communist Labour run Britain.
We shouldn’t even be having this discussion.
Motorists pay road tax and what do they get for it lousy roads and speed cameras.
So Gordon Brown and anyone else who thinks that road tax for cyclists can stick it up their backsides.
To expand on what Mr. Wanderers (ahem) said, non-motorists each subsidise motorists by about £40 p.a.
Also, try googling for “fourth power of axle weight”. Why? Because that’s how much road wear a vehicle causes. So, if you say that a car weighs roughly ten times as much as a bike, that means the car is contributing ten to the fourth power, which is ten thousand, times as much wear, and that’s even before taking into account the greater tarmac footprint and safety burden of cars. And just don’t get started on lorries. If we adopted “user pays”, VED would be increased for all groups of motorists, and the amount raised from cyclists would be less than the cost of collecting it.
In fact, cyclists pay the same rate as any other Band A low-emissions vehicle: zero. Other vehicles in this band include horses and small cars, so if the tax on your vehicle is not zero, you should consider upgrading to a more efficient one.
I think there is a myth that cyclists should pay some form of road tax because people assume a bike is likely to be their sole mode transport and therefore cyclists are seen as tax evaders.
One thing seems to be overlooked. There is no such thing as “road tax”. A tax of that name was abolished in 1936 and was intended at the time to be a contribution to highway costs. Vehicle Excise Duty, or Car Tax is what many people mistakenly think of as “road tax”. It isn’t. It no more pays for the road than the VAT on a Mars bar. Local authorities have maintenance responsibility for the roads. Everyone should know that. Especially Council Tax payers, because it says so on their Council Tax accounts. My Local Authority’s highway maintenance budget for this year accounts for some 6% of the precept. Local Authorities’ get their funding from a combination of Council Tax and a Treasury Grant from general taxation. So, the roads are for everyone. And everyone pays.
If the logic of “user pays” is extended, we’d have pedestrians paying “road tax”, because footways are part of the highway; we’d have the NHS funded by a tax on sick people. The logic just doesn’t work.