× Expand David Michael Miller

The governor and Legislature are facing a projected $685 million annual shortfall in the transportation budget. Things aren’t too bad just yet, but wait a little while and we’ll start to notice more bumpy roads, unfilled potholes and treacherous bridges.

I’m among the first to say that our state, like most states, expands highways far more than it should. I’m all for taking care of what we’ve already built before we widen roads, build elaborate intersections or unneeded bypasses.

But even if we cut the waste, we’ll still need new revenues to deal with the basic maintenance and rebuilding that needs doing, not to mention the expansions many of us would like to see in transit and bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

While needs grow, revenues are stagnant. That’s because we rely heavily on the gas tax, and those revenues are not growing much. There are good reasons for this, the main one being that cars have become much more fuel-efficient. We’re not talking hybrids or electrics here (they make up a tiny fraction of the total fleet), but standard engines that are just getting better all the time. Average fuel efficiency has hit 24 miles per gallon, and government standards will shoot up to better than 54 miles per gallon by 2025.

We’re also driving less. Vehicle miles traveled stopped increasing with the great recession, and have only recently started to creep back up. Adjusted for population growth, VMT is down around 7.5% from its peak in 2005. We’re not likely to ever drive as much as we did a decade ago. That’s because aging baby boomers are looking to move back into the city, and millennials who have a stronger preference for mass transit and biking are going carless or at least car light.

And finally, the gas tax rate itself has remained flat, with the state taking 31 cents a gallon and the federal government 18 cents. The state tax hasn’t increased since 2006, and the feds last increased their tax in 1993.

The bottom line is that we need to find a new way to pay for transportation. The Transportation Finance & Policy Commission, which I served on and which issued its report in 2013, recommended a number of options. The one many of us liked a lot was the per-mile charge. Basically, it is an increase in the vehicle registration fee, but drivers would pay it based on the number of miles they drove the previous year. It’s fair because wear and tear on our roads happens without regard to the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. And it’s good environmental policy because it would make people aware of exactly how much they drive and what each mile costs, which could result in less driving overall.

Even Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) says he likes the per mile concept. But Gov. Scott Walker has rejected all tax increases, including this one. Instead, Walker has proposed a dramatic increase in borrowing for roads. Even the Wisconsin road-building lobby opposes that idea because they can see where it leads. A 30% increase in borrowing isn’t sustainable. At some point, the system crashes under all that debt.

Another option would be to cancel or delay road projects, something that will probably need to happen anyway, but also something that is generally politically unpopular. And in the case of needed road repairs, it can start to get dangerous.

So, at some point revenues need to be raised. But the first shot across that bow is a big miss. To date the only proposal for transportation revenue increases is to create a tax on bicycles.

That’s right. Bicycles. You know, the things you power yourself. The things that don’t contribute much of anything to wear and tear on the streets, that don’t demand expensive parking lots, that don’t contribute to global warming and other environmental problems. In fact, bikes reduce the need for more expensive road projects. So, of course, that’s precisely the thing we should want to tax. This makes perfect sense if you live in some other post-rational world.

The proposal, which surfaced in a decision paper produced by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, would tax sales of new bikes at $25 per bike. The proceeds, which the bureau estimates at about $4.8 million a year, would go into the general state transportation fund and would not be earmarked for bike projects.

As of this writing, no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the idea, but there’s about a 99% chance that it comes from Joint Finance co-chair Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), who has been talking about a bike tax for some time and asked the DOT for a background paper on the issue.

Even if it were a good idea, $4.8 million a year does not go far toward solving a $680 million per year problem. The Joint Finance Committee is not likely to increase any significant revenue source like the gas tax or a per mile fee, but some of its members feel perfectly comfortable taxing bicycles for a pittance.

That’s because bikes are a slice of red meat in the culture wars. This state and the nation face serious issues with regard to transportation infrastructure. As long as we screw around with goofy ideas like the bike tax we won’t get to any real solution.

Dave Cieslewicz is the executive director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed.