Bicycling groups push for year-round bicycle paths

You realize that we're talking about a 4-5 mile, 7-foot-wide strip of pavement, right?

Something tells me that we don't need to pass a special budget amendment for that.

Enough is enough, already! The gas tax is a hopelessly outdated vehicle ill-suited for actually collecting a steady stream of funds through which we can maintain and expand our transportation infrastructure. It ought to be repealed and replaced.

By subtracting that $0.24 in state gas tax and another $0.184 from the current average cost of gas in MA (per here: http://www.massachusettsgasprices.com/Prices_Natio..., about $3.454 as of this morning), we find that the pre-tax price of fuel per gallon in MA is $3.03. At your figured 1380 gallons of gas and assuming (uh-oh, you know what they say about assuming) $3.03 works out 'close enough' to the 2013 yearly average, you paid $331.20 in state gas tax, $253.92 in federal gas tax, and $4181.40 in pre-tax price of fuel. If, however, you had paid MA sales tax on that $3.03 instead of state fuel tax - you would have been charged just $261.3375 in state tax, representing a 'savings' by you of just under $70.

Wow! Would you look at that? It's a tax cut! Republicans are all about cutting taxes. Now, I know what you're thinking, but hang on. This gets better. Right now, the MA gas tax is rather nonsensically "indexed to inflation" and our friends in the GOP are hard at work trying to get that overturned one way or another. But even if they don't manage to overturn it, "indexing to inflation" does nothing to account for how erratic the price of gas is to begin with (and it also doesn't account for the difference in fuel cost from octane to octane) - the cost of gas could very well spike faster than "inflation."

Suppose that a month from now, the pre-tax cost of gas has jumped to $3.20. While we hand-wring and pearl-clutch about "indexing to inflatation," the fuel tax per gallon will have remained static (awaiting its annual increase) and the percentage of the cost of fuel that is "taxes" will have actually decreased. If, however, gas was subject to state sales tax instead, that $0.17/gal rise in fuel prices would have automatically caused the amount paid in taxes to also go up by $0.01/gal - automatically. No "indexing" required, no hand-wringing, no avenues for legitimate grievance. Sure, it's still a "tax cut," but that lost revenue can and will easily be made up for over time through other mechanisms (commercial VMT, which only impacts the heaviest and most damaging road users and nicely side-steps the legitimate privacy concerns inherent in private VMT schemes).

"But what about the federal fuel tax?" you're about to ask. Great question! There's no federal sales tax, but that doesn't mean we can't restructure the federal fuel tax to also behave like the sales tax - as a percentage of cost instead of a fixed cents-per-gallon. Right now, that $0.184 federal gas tax is a little bit over 6%, and there's talk of wanting to double the cost in cents per gallon. If, instead, we replaced "cents per gallon" with a straight 10% federal tax ($0.303 cents at today's prices) - the overall amount of taxes paid remains static, if more heavily weighted towards the federal side of the equation, and instead of this "inflation indexing" nonsense, rising and falling gas taxes see the tax revenue adjust automatically.

It's straightforward, it's fair, it guarantees we don't have to go through this circus nonsense every decade or so, and it's a "tax cut" that long-term results in more funding - which, in my opinion, is the best kind of "tax cut."

Do you know what that means?

If drivers paid all of it, you would have a point.

do I need special liability insurance if I want to walk across a street? the reason you need liability insurance and inspection and registration fees is because cars are dangerous weapons (car collisions are the leading cause of death for people under the age of 40) that pollute the environment and wear down our roads. They place an enormous burden on our infrastructure (and our environment, and our health and safety) and thus you should have to pay more, and should be more liable and responsible if you want use them.

bicycles, on the other hand, have a very minimal impact on infrastructure, pedestrians or other cyclists killed by cyclists is extremely rare - 1 death every few years - and they don't pollute, unless physical activity gives you flatulence. While I do think there needs to be more cyclist education and passing basic bike safety should be required of all middle schoolers and high schoolers - if you actually went and did the calculations for how much impact bikes have on our infrastructure (balanced against the economic and health benefits they provide) - and subtract that from what we already pay in other taxes, that "bike tax" would be negligible, and cyclists likely already pay more than their fair share.

http://grist.org/article/2010-09-27-why-an-additio...

Funny how nobody talks about "entitlement" when drivers plunk down cones to save bits of public property, slash tires, etc...but when a cyclist asks "hey, would you do something about this road-for-bikes being a skating rink and badly plowed?" it's ENTITLEMENT CITY.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con...

Wait, what!!?? Your side walk????. I'd go into a Sally style tirade about it being a 'public sidewalk' and 'you don't own it' rant, but hey, it's late, I'm tired and she's too silly to spend time bitching about.

Then you should move

My 80 year old neighbor will be thrilled at your comment-- and yes, she still works!