Study: Do motorists pay their way? No.

One frequent objection to bicycling is that "bicyclists don't pay their way".

We have previous published a rather complete debunking of that claim.

A related question, though, is whether motorists pay their way.

A recent study by Mark Delucchi of the University of California, Davis, (PDF file) answers that question with a resounding no:

To pay for [road] infrastructure and services, governments collect revenue from a variety of [motor-vehicle user] taxes and fees. The basic objective of this paper is to compare these government expenditures with the corresponding user tax and fee payments in the U.S.

The analysis indicates that in the U.S. current tax and fee payments to the government by motor-vehicle users fall short of government expenditures related to motor-vehicle use by approximately 20-70 cents per gallon of all motor fuel. (Note that in this accounting we include only government expenditures; we do not include any "external" costs of motor-vehicle use.)

Charles Komanoff comments:

That implied subsidy of 20 to 70 cents a gallon -- which excludes social and environmental costs such as climate damage and uncompensated crash costs, which Delucchi has tallied elsewhere -- equates to 7 to 25 percent of the current price of gasoline. On a dollar basis, U.S. drivers are underpaying local, state and national governments by $40 to $105 billion a year.

Delucchi's conclusion, "motor-vehicle users in the U.S. -- unlike users in most European countries -- do not 'pay their way'," will come as no surprise to many of us. Still, putting the Delucchi seal of approval on the "subsidies for traffic" thesis is a watershed event. Dismantling those subsidies may have just gotten a little easier.

One consequence of this automobile subsidy is that single-occupant motor vehicle travel is encouraged--because users don't have to pay the full cost of their travel--while other modes, like transit, walking, and bicycling, get short shrift because they don't receive a subsidy nearly as large as motor vehicle travel does.

In short--people choose to drive more than they otherwise would, because they don't have to pay the full cost of it.