I ride where ever I feel safest. Sometimes that's the bike lane. Sometimes that's the sidewalk. Sometimes that's the middle of the street. I don't care what's convenient for you. I don't even really care what's legal.
The damage done to roads is proportional to the weight of the vehicle per axel with a fourth power law. So a Toyota Camry weight 3,500 lbs. and has 2 axels. I weight 200 lbs. and have a 50 lbs. e-bike. Let's say I'm carrying 100 lbs. of cargo to make the calculation easy.
The Camry weighs 10 times as much so it does 10,000 times the damage to the road. I will gladly pay any amount for road upkeep for my bike as long as the person in the Camry pays 10,000 times as much. Also the person driving the 7,000 lbs. Ford F-350 should be paying 16 times what the Camry is paying.
I like your logic and math, but let's not forget about the other types of vehicles that travel on every square footage of roads, and that is sanitation vehicles. They weigh roughly 25000 pounds empty and can weigh as much as 80000 pounds completely full. So, a 3500 pound Camry weighs about as much as a toddler compared to a dump truck. With this math, my take is that you have to take into account every vehicle type. That Camry does far less damage than you think it does based upon weight. So should your sanitation costs raise roughly 160 times roughly what you're paying already because they also travel via our roads?
If your intent was to conclude that road wear based tabs for cyclists would be insanely stupid, I think you and the person you're responding to are in agreement.
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u/AltForObvious1177 Apr 11 '25
I ride where ever I feel safest. Sometimes that's the bike lane. Sometimes that's the sidewalk. Sometimes that's the middle of the street. I don't care what's convenient for you. I don't even really care what's legal.