Similarly, everyone benefits from roads, even if they don’t drive, even if they are a house hermit. What you thought you amazon package was just teleporting? Your life saving medicine? Your food?
I’ve never heard anyone claim that only drivers pay for roads.
It might be news to some but your mail, groceries, healthcare, emergency services, construction vehicles, tradesmen and myriad other essential services require roads regardless of whether you personally drive on them.
Plus, the implication that your taxes should only pay for services that you personally use, or even for services that you might use, is just plain uncivilized.
Some people have that situation, for example, where they can choose whether to pay for fire services, and if they don’t and their house catches fire, the fire department won’t do anything except protect neighboring houses that have paid for it.
It’s pretty backwards for modern sensibilities.
My property taxes go overwhelmingly to the school (well like 52 percent where nothing else is close to that big) and I’ll never have kids.
I like the kids educated that do exist though! Like damn we need them educated!
I don’t have kids why the hell should I pay for schools…wellml because I like living in an educated society, helló I’ll never bep upset I’m paying for (real actual scientifically and primary source-backed) education.
Road != car road
Don’t tell the /fuckcars people that. They’ll get absolutely livid and start calling you names.
The total amount of money that’s spent on roads and driving in car-oriented cultures is absolutely fucking astounding when you add it all up. Counting only “highways” is just the tip of the iceberg.
right, highways are a tiny % of the budget. Most of the costs to a car are elsewhere. (and even more elsewhere if you count things not measured in money)
There are a lot of reasons we should be encouraging transit, but we still need highways for shipping and construction use that can never be on transit (could be on trains, that doesn’t seem reasonable)
Not a good take. People don’t have to be driving to benefit from roads. Deliveries, emergency access, routing for utilities
Taxes go to schools, libraries, fire and police, lots of things you might never use. I think gas taxes usually go towards road maintenance (or they should).
Not directed at you, OP, but there seems to be a lot of anti-tax stuff lately that I’ve seen posted, and not one of them brought up how much taxes go to support a military operation. They always seem to lean towards pointing out how much of their money goes to social programs that they don’t use or want. They ought to compare the price of a school vs. a missile.
It seems to me that the snippy responses in here are from people responding to the headline and an imaginary POV from the author. The author has thought about this stuff more than anyone commenting here has.
“… regardless of whether they drive or not.”
Even if they don’t drive, they benefit from roads and highways. Trucks bring food to stores, along with all the other products. Unless they are living off the grid, growing their own food, and weaving their own cloth, they’re dependent on the roads. Also, emergency services and maintenance crews need the roads.
Many people long for a simple life, until they break a leg, or their appendix bursts, or they have an infected tooth. Then they’re more than happy to take the road to the hospital.
There’s no dichotomy of “roads or no roads”. Individuals driving necessitates wider and more extensive roads. People who choose to drive when they otherwise don’t have to have the effect of making everything farther away and making road maintenance considerably more expensive.
And your point?
Historically, roads were built for transporting goods, and this started long before cars existed as a concept, see Rome, the Silk Road, etc.
Even in the US the road infrastructure push was driven by the need to transport goods with trucks. Early days of the conversation were around this. It wasn’t until cars started becoming affordable for the average person (rather than the wealthy elites) that cars were even a consideration.
Even today the infrastructure is designed around trucks - bridge heights, durability, etc, cars are secondary.
You can stop driving cars all you want (which simply isn’t going to happen) but you’d still have trucks, because trucks on roads are flexible and trains are not.
You should also know that most vehicles do little to no damage to the roadway. 99%+ of the damage comes from heavy truck and bus traffic.
Almost like we should pay vehicle registration based on gross weight and distance driven.
Love to see a source on that as it’s counter to what I’ve heard.
It’s a well-known rule of matsci
The tldr;
“Therefore, the resulting stress difference between truck and car is 15,000 to 1.”
yea, that figure comes to my mind when it is said larger cars consume more gasoline, so they pay more gas taxes, therefore that compensate road damage, but the proportion is way off
on other note, i like to think 1000 light scratches do less damage to the skin than one very energetic
Counter to what you’ve heard? Like it’s the light car traffic doing the damage?
Edit: To clarify- when I say damage I mean to the roadway surface and not the surrounding infrastructure.
Even the surrounding infrastructure.
Cars are designed to take the damage of a crash and dissipate the energy, transport trucks aren’t. Then there’s the momentum issue.
One truck crashing into a bridge is way more damage than a bunch of cars.
No wonder Michigan has the worst roads. The state has one of the highest truck weight limits in the country.
Damn, your mom needs to be carried by truck?
But you pay more when you have a big car. In Germany anyway.
A persistent myth that drivers pay for roads through gas taxes and tolls pervades all discussions on transportation funding, limiting the conversation not just about how we pay for transportation but also what our transportation system looks like.
You’re repeating the exact misconception TFA addresses. Your large vehicle fee is a vanishingly small proportion of upkeep.
The citizens pay for the infrastructure. Yes. That’s how it works. You want mail? You want your package delivery? You want your grubhub? You want things to be in stock at the stores you shop at? You want the farmers at the farmer’s market to be able to bring your their sweet corn? Even if you don’t drive, you use the roads. All of the time, every day. This myth of “I don’t drive” or, “I ride a bike” or whatever excuse is en vogue today, it’s reductionist logic that doesn’t hold up. You belong to a society that uses infrastructure, and as a member, you use it as well.
Just like people without kids pay for schools through the same mechanisms
Anyone who believes that only drivers pay for roads has obviously doesn’t participate in their local government, so why would they care anyway.
And this is why I support cyclists and pedestrians having as much right to roadways as a person that chooses to drive their car.
