My understanding for a while has been that gas taxes and other motor vehicle related taxes and fees only pays for around half the cost of highway construction and maintenance, with the rest coming from the general revenue and from such things as voter approved bonds, that is, the sorts of things everyone pays for. You seem like you know what you are talking about, so if that is not correct please enlighten me.

I’m asking because I use a bicycle as my primary transportation and I occasionally get shit about how I’m not helping to pay for the roads I am riding on. I respond with the supposition related above plus the fact that bicycles barely affect the roads and thus are not meaningfully adding to the cost of maintenence. You can see this if you look at the condition of the pavement at any traffic light that is at the bottom of a hill. The road is beat to shit by the “carpet effect” of heavy vehicles applying their breaks as they stop. This is just an easily observed example of what is going on everywhere.

By the way I rarely use bike paths* because they are so poorly maintained as compared to roads. Yet they are much cheaper to build and maintain. If they were built better in the first place tree roots would not create spoke-breakers after a couple of years.

*Yes, I’m out there pissing off motorists with my insistence on being respected as a vehicle. I take the lane whenever it will contribute to my safety. Suck it, death pilots!