You're right. It's really dangerous for us to use the public highway without the bike lane. We paying our taxes also, the government should prioritize the cyclist.
I disagree, cyclists do not pay taxes to support bike lanes, when they drive cars they buy gas and that supports the roads for automotive use and automotive use only, but that's because they are buying gas for their cars and NOT for their bicycles. And right now the bike paths are being supported by gasoline taxes, but that's only because of pressure being placed on governments from left lobbyist who want to keep 1% of the population happy and disregarding the other 99%. I don't think it's even remotely fair that 99% of the car users have to pay taxes for bike paths while their roads deteriorate!
Obviously I'm a cyclist, but I HATE paying taxes for something that very few, less than 1.5% of the population uses nationwide, yes certain states, those in the sun belt, have a higher usage, but the US is mostly in a cold belt and on cooler and cold days those bike paths are rarely used. I live in Indiana, I ride the bike paths (but wouldn't care if they were there or not!) and on any given weekday in the summer I may see a couple of dozen riders on a 24 mile stretch (round trip), and on some stretches of the path it's mostly people wondering about on foot with kids. On the weekend the usage does go up along with people wondering about on foot with kids, but most of those people are concentrated in the park area that's about a mile loop, once outside that loop usage drops way down. But once school is back and the weather drops I can go on that same 24 mile stretch and be lucky to see one or two riders! And on the weekends I may run into 3 or 4 cyclists. I cannot see the reason for a community to spend an average of $130,000 for one mile of path, (and this figure goes WAY up in the sun belt states, upwards of $535,000 per mile!) And then we hear communities crying that they don't have enough money? LOL!! they don't have enough money because they spend it on stupid projects to appease a tiny percentage of the population!
This is why I support some sort of tax or fee on the purchase of new or used bikes out of a local bike shop, (private sales would be to difficult to police). I think an additional tax of 10% added onto the sale would then go strictly for the use of bike paths. Let me tell you, if you look up how many bikes are sold in each state and then find the average price of a bike, and calculate that you would be shocked as to how much money that 10% would give to the state each year, far more then the gas tax does. Yeah I can hear you all screaming that the government would spend that money on other projects, ok, they do that now with gasoline tax! so what's your point? Or screaming that people won't spend as much money on bikes...which I seriously doubt that by looking at people spending $4,000 just for a set of wheels!!! or $9,000 for a bicycle that doesn't even have 1/10th of the technology in it that you can find in new motorcycles at those prices and less; or $350 for saddle which is probably actually worth only $10 in materials and labor! So no, that will not decrease the sales of bikes or the amount of money spent on a bike, plus most people who ride bikes would be all too eager to spend the tax money to support the building of bike paths. So that theory is shot to hell.
Also the longest bike paths in the US are privately (and some federal grants) funded, so that alone tells you that cyclists would gladly pay taxes on their bikes, it also tells you that people would donate more money then just the taxes if they know it's going to build a robust bike path/lane system in their city and county.