It’s not a huge amount of money, but a North Carolina state legislator has introduced a bill that would require every bike owner 16 years of age or older in the state to fork over $10 annually for bicycle registration for every bike they ride on a city street. State representative Jeffrey Elmore’s bill would require bikes to carry license plates or pay a $25 fine for failing to register. The money gathered from the statewide registration would go toward “bicycle safety-related projects.”
Residents of a North Carolina community annoyed at an influx of cyclists riding their twisty, rural roads reportedly requested Elmore introduce the bill as a means of identifying cyclists who relieve themselves on private property, help themselves to apples growing on trees in the area, and who repeatedly clash with motorists. With the money from the registration fees, dedicated bike lanes would be built, well, somewhere, to encourage cyclists to avoid areas without a comparable bike infrastructure in place.
“All of our roads are built with a consumption tax,” Elmore said of the ways that gasoline taxes pay for road work, effectively, though likely unintentionally declaring the registration fees would be a form of bicycle taxation.
Critics of the idea point out that municipal bike registration fee programs have an abysmal track record, often costing far more to enforce than they draw in revenue. Typically a city will introduce a fee, expecting to generate revenue from it, direct law enforcement to monitor the program and issue citations to riders who refuse to comply, and then be overwhelmed by the amount of cyclists who never register, creating a nightmare for record-keeping and generating far more in costs to maintain the program than brought in through fee collection.
Plus, it can be considered a serious hurdle for disadvantaged cyclists for whom the fees are significant and creating more situations to put riders into direct and unpleasant conflict with law enforcement.
“[We work] to encourage cycling as a mode of transportation for youth and young adults, and this bill would discourage them and put a big burden on organizations like ours to find the funds to assist them with the registration process,” Kelly Cascaden, executive director of A Bike for Every Child, told Bicycling.
Photo: Coen van den Broek
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The revolution will not be televised
I would be more inclined to support this system if it was $10 total to get a registration card, but $10 per bike could get expensive quickly.
No thanks. I don’t need your NC license plate. I already have one on my bike from Honeycomb cereal. Can’t wait to ride in NC with my out-of-state bike.
Hahahahaha!!!!
If I thought that North Carolina, the state where I grew up, would actually do something positive for bikers with the funds, I might, maybe, be willing to support this. But really, its just a punitive fee imposed by some red necks who are angry that they might possibly be inconvenienced for like 30 seconds by a biker.
North Carolina has become a joke. Thanks NC GOP.
Neither party has an exclusive on bad ideas. Portland, OR proposed the same thing and the GOP definitely isn’t in charge there.
Old argument that has no merit. We should should get a tax credit for riding a bike, instead.
Without the cycling community controlling WHERE the money is spent, this program will never be successful.
I think it’s just some paper-pusher in Raleigh is bored and has nothing better to do.
Here in my QTH of Vancouver, WA they proposed this same thing, for the same tired reasons, about a decade ago and it never made it to committee. One reason was they were scrambling for cash to support their ill-fated I-5 bridge replacement speculation project, which also went nowhere but wasted lots of time and money. The public backlash in the local paper, plus being as close as Vancouver is to Portland, Ore. meant enforcement would have been a nightmare (if not impossible) and doomed it from the start. In fact I think they even had proposed it IN Portland (!!) and it never made it farther than the compost bin outside the politician’s office.
I ride bikes. A lot. Always have. I would have continued to ride as long and as far as I always had and not paid it if it had passed. Most people with bikes already have cars thus they already pay the road tax that funds things like bike tracks. IIRC from my US history class 30 years ago, double-taxation is specifically barred under the US Constitution. But then how many years has it been since US bureaucraps gave half a rat’s backside about Constitutional law?
I am not opposed but I don’t think I should have to have one $10 license for each bike. That’s like $100/year. =)
An actual plate? How big is it and where does it go?
Sorry, but the money would end up in a black hole of state bureaucracy.
I don’t ride on roads unless I have to. With the death toll for cyclists on the rise (here in MN anyway), I think it’s time to change our infrastructure with cyclist safety being the top priority. That costs money.
Yes, I pay taxes (dearly here I might add) but at least I see our state doing something to enhance the cycling community such as building bike lanes and expanding our trail system.
This is not a new issue, nor do I feel that increased awareness/advocacy has been effective. Cyclists and motorists will always be at odds. It’s better to create bike only spaces than run the risk of getting involved with a furious motorist in my opinion.
The original road improvement impetus of over a hundred years ago began with the explosion of cyclists finding rutted horse and wagon tracks impassable. Now, of course, the issue of road maintenance is frivolous, as the wear and tear from those skinny tires is infinitessimal. Widening roads, to add safe shoulders for bikes, and where feasible, creating segregated path systems, seems logical and usually cost-effective, in the long run. These licensing ploys invariably appear based on appeals to a typically conservative, philosophically anti-bike constituency, even though many examples of subsequent renewed business activity shows riders actually stop, eat, buy things, and repeat, with friends. I personally have far more trouble around other younger, pushy riders who have no tradition of old group etiquette, courtesy, right-of-way, announcing oneself while passing, etc. If you are not wearing a bib number, you are not in a race; get over yourselves.
If gas taxes were solely responsible for road maintenance, the roads would be far shittier than they are.
Bike riders who pay state & municipality taxes are already paying for roads via general funds. The remaining ones who aren’t paying taxes probably need to hang on to what money they have.