Interesting links. I think the key issue in the Canadian blog is the road cost per mile for car driving v cycling:
Roadway costs – cars = 5.6¢/ml bicycles = 0.2¢/ml
I assume this refers to the amount of road space required, and the impact a car/bicycle has on the need for maintenance/repair/renewal.
I reckon these costs are similar in the UK, given similar road building technology, in which case we can safely say that a car imposes 28 times the costs on our road network compared to a bicycle per mile of road used.
Factor in the difference in mileage covered (in this case over 3 times more miles by car than by bicycle) and the difference becomes more like 90 times more costs.
Would be interesting to do a Darlington/UK calculation of how much tax we each actually pay towards roads via general taxation, council tax and road tax – and how much we cost. Hopefully we can finally silence the motorists who claim “they’re our roads ‘cos we pay road tax”.
Interesting links. I think the key issue in the Canadian blog is the road cost per mile for car driving v cycling:
Roadway costs –
cars = 5.6¢/ml
bicycles = 0.2¢/ml
I assume this refers to the amount of road space required, and the impact a car/bicycle has on the need for maintenance/repair/renewal.
I reckon these costs are similar in the UK, given similar road building technology, in which case we can safely say that a car imposes 28 times the costs on our road network compared to a bicycle per mile of road used.
Factor in the difference in mileage covered (in this case over 3 times more miles by car than by bicycle) and the difference becomes more like 90 times more costs.
Would be interesting to do a Darlington/UK calculation of how much tax we each actually pay towards roads via general taxation, council tax and road tax – and how much we cost. Hopefully we can finally silence the motorists who claim “they’re our roads ‘cos we pay road tax”.