[jodrellblank]

> You’re arguing that we should use motorized vehicles instead of bikes??

Are you going to bike 100 miles to the next city? Are you going to bike to work with a broken ankle? Are you going to bike furniture home from the furniture shop? Are you going to bike everyone's garbage to the dump? Are you going to bike building materials around?

Given that you're going to have motorized things, they should be for optional, occasional use as an assitance for walking people who then don't need a bike or a car.

Because otherwise, you're going to have motorized things, and walking people, and bikes on top, for no particular reason except a bike obsession.

> Bullshit. Nobody is paying walking taxes. You are enjoying the very same “externality”.

? Nobody is paying explicit sidewalk taxes in the same way nobody is paying explicit streetlamp taxes. People are still paying taxes for infrastructure in the environment they live in, and that covers paying for sidewalks.

[dahart]

> People are still paying taxes for infrastructure in the environment they live in, and that covers paying for sidewalks.

Yeah, I agree, that's right. The bikers are paying for sidewalks & roads, just like everyone else. You've nicely summed up exactly why bike infrastructure is not being somehow "subsidised" by drivers and walkers.

Despite your wish to call sidewalks your own and not share them, and despite the fact that I agree with you about separating pedestrians from cyclists, sidewalks are multi-use infrastructure that everyone pays for and everyone can use. It doesn't matter that you don't like it, the intent has always included bikes as well as pedestrians and wheelbarrows and dogs and children, among many other uses.

Thus settles the red herring non-issue of externalizing taxes to pay for pavement. It's not a real thing.

[jodrellblank]

> the intent has always included bikes

Sidewalks predate bikes by roughly 4000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk#History

> Despite your wish to call sidewalks your own and not share them

I don't mind sharing them with things moving at walking pace. Dogs, wheelbarrows, ice cream carts, wheelchairs, maybe skateboards.

I no more want to share them with bikes doing 10-15mph than with mopeds doing 10-15mph or sprinting people.

> The bikers are paying for sidewalks & roads, just like everyone else.

Bikers are paying diesel and petrol tax and road vehicle tax? Not in the UK they're not. Pedestrians aren't either. If they're not, that isn't "just like everyone else".

> It doesn't matter that you don't like it

But it does matter that you do like it?