I know I'm going to be the big bad wolf on this but in some areas, especially those areas that most cyclists stay home and off the road when it gets cold, bike lanes and paths are very expensive taxpayers money pits! I live in Fort Wayne Indiana, even in the summer during an average work day I may see only 2 or 3 dozen riders in a 20 mile stretch of the bike path, and I bet less than 2% of the people that live in my city use the expensive paths. What's the purpose? Look, the motor laws say that a bike has all the rights of the road that motorist have, if we kept our rights to the road and rode in a manner that was legal and courteous to others we wouldn't be afraid of getting hurt on the road. I've been riding for over 40 years, long before paths and lanes became the thing, and I rarely had an accident. While of course today there is the added distraction of morons texting while driving but even so I still ride the streets today and I don't worry about that, the only thing I do different now when riding streets vs 40 years ago is that I now use a bright rear flasher, and I wear a neon green jacket or vest.
And how expensive are these bike lanes and paths? Depends on where they're located but they start at $5,000 and can go as high as $535,000 per MILE! With the average cost being $130,000 per mile! So in Fort Wayne we have about a 30 mile system that means it cost about 3.9 million dollars to build and it's still not finished. For paying almost 4 million dollars for something that less than 2% of the population uses seems like a huge waste of taxpayers money.
I would be ok with spending that kind of money on paths and lanes if the government established either an extra tax for new bicycles to help pay for that stuff, or a one time registration fee, or a combination of both. I can hear some of you screaming now, but why should gasoline taxes be used to build bike paths and lanes while our roads crumble for cars to use? The gasoline tax should only be used for construction of new roads and repairs to current roads, and that's it. Indiana had to raise our gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon because some of the money was being syphoned away to pay for bike paths and lanes and not enough was going into road maintenance, plus they increased car registration fees. I hate to break the news but 98% of car owners in colder climate areas of the country never ride a bike yet they have to pay for those that do, just doesn't seem fair to me...and I'm a cyclist, but I'm also a car owner!