Oregon’s bike tax revenue is far below expectations, while admin overhead is going up
Receipts going down, admin overhead going up.
Note: I'm currently on a family trip and not working normal hours. Email and message responses will be delayed and story and posting volumes here and on our social media accounts will not be at their usual levels until I return to Portland September 4th. Thanks for your patience and understanding. - Jonathan Maus, BikePortland Publisher and Editor
Receipts going down, admin overhead going up.
A Sunday morning news show that’s the opposite of the Internet.
Pandora’s box is now open.
When politics wins and policy loses.
Here are three more interesting conclusions about how to improve biking in Portland from the report.
The city’s bicycle advocates aren’t exactly thrilled by a 4% excise tax proposal. But perhaps surprisingly, they aren’t gasping in horror, either.
Rep. Ed Orcutt thinks that “bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride” because, “the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider.” A high-ranking Washington legislator has added insult to injury in his support for a bike tax by claiming that bicycling is not environmentally friendly because people … Read more
Tobias Read HB 3152, a bill to toll people riding bikes across a new I-5/Columbia River bridge has reared its head in the state legislature. Surprising as the bill itself was to anyone with a reasonable understanding of transportation policy, what was even more surprising to us was that House Rep. Tobias Read (D-Beaverton) was … Read more
Don’t forget to add tax.(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland) The Seattle Times reported today on a $10 billion transportation funding package introduced by state lawmakers. The package includes a provision that would levy $25 tax on the sale of all bicycles over $500. The tax would be one of six revenue streams and would be expected … Read more
A bike tax has more supporters than you might think.(Photo © J. Maus) 2010 will be a year of major discussions about how to finance America’s transportation system. As the use of bicycles is taken more seriously and more money is spent on bike-centric facilities, calls for a revenue stream taken directly from people who … Read more
“We’re not going to put our blinders on and say ‘no, we refuse to talk about it’.”–BTA lobbyist Karl Rohde One of the many interesting conversations that we’ll follow in the upcoming legislative session is the concept of a bike tax. We shared news of the tax last week and reported that the Bicycle Transportation … Read more
“There’s no way we could have put in the facilities we’ve put in in the last 20 years without the bike tax.”— A Colorado Springs city planner as told to the Gazette newspaper In light of the bike excise tax idea that is being mulled about here in Oregon, I thought I’d share a story … Read more
Comment of the Week: Gratitude for N/NE Broadway project