Luckily it’s a Friday…the SVP, FDP and others are proposing a 20 CHF bicycle vignette to support the financing of roads.
This, this is beyond dumb.
Christian Wasserfallen, FDP National Councillor for the city of Berne and cyclist, has already stated that he likes the idea. “Cyclists benefit from the taxes paid by motorists without contributing to the financing themselves,” he said.
Axa (car driver) already pays the 40 CHF vignette, and fuel tax to support road infrastructure. Axa (bike rider) is a leach that benefits from the taxes paid by motorists without contributing at all to road infrastructure.
Big brain legislators propose the way to end the freeriding of cyclists is to tax both car driving and bike riding. They claim a bicycle vignette would allow to reduce the tax burden on motorists. So, we might end up paying the same total per year (car + bike tax). However, the tax admin/collection costs of 2 taxes will be higher and thus a lower net tax revenue. Brilliant! It’s almost like they are rushed to tender the collection contract of the new tax to just another private company collecting taxes.
PS. I’d just laugh if a family with 1 car ends up paying more road tax per year because they have 2, 3 or 4 bikes.
Back in the day, you had to buy a vignette for your bike. Can’t remember when they scrapped it, though. 2011? 2012? Something like that. But I think that was more of a liability insurance in case you caused damage to a parked car, hit a pedestrian or ran over someone’s dog rather than a “road tax”.
I’d go further and remove all costs of roads from general taxation and charge it directly to road users. I’m tired of regular road users free-riding on those of us who don’t drive much or at all!
More seriously, this bike vignette is just taking money from my right hand and passing it to my left hand. Then, money is taken from both hands by tax collection.
Axa. If you have two cars do you pay for one or two vignettes*? Do you pay one or two annual fees? Do you pay fuel taxes for one or two vehicles.
Cycles and scooters (let’s not forget them) use the road and they pay what to cover the costs of road maintenance? I think the answer is ‘not a lot’ or ‘next to nothing’.
A f20 vignette is frankly peanuts. It should be more like f100.
*I think the f40 annual fee for the vignette is also much too low, particularly when compared with neighbouring countries. A single one-way journey from Geneva to Nice costs at least €50 in tolls.
Correct they were for liability insurance. They were done away when someone noticed that most residents homeowners insurance already covered the cyclists. Unnecessary insurance provided by the cantons. And never enforced.
A quick estimate is that I pay around 1’300-1’400 francs in gasoline tax.
A 20 francs bicycle vignette is indeed peanuts. So, most of the revenue will be lost to the company collecting and enforcing the collection of the tax, like SERAFE AG.
Which is the invoice I pay every December to canton Aargau. In hubraum-lover canton I pay 400 francs.
If I lived in Zurich, I’d pay 1’000+ francs more. Weight is what determines the car impact on the road, and car weighs the same in both Aargau and Zurich.
Clear sign that road and fuel taxes - like any other tax - are not 1:1 earmarked to a spending purpose but rather just one source of income into the pot.
I’m all in favour of “You use - you pay” too as you seem to put it.
Regular cyclists are statistically much less likely to need the services of a doctor or hospital in a given year due the health benefits of cycling.
They should automatically get a reduction in their health insurance premiums and those who who use more medical services should correspondingly pay more.
The same old story… From an economic perspective, cyclists bring “negative costs,” meaning a benefit. There are various studies on this. A 2018 German study estimated the overall societal benefit per kilometer cycled at 30 cents (compared to costs of 20 cents per kilometer traveled by car). An Austrian study from 2011 estimated the economic benefit per kilometer cycled at over 80 cents, and a 2012 report from the University of Zurich shows an annual benefit of 700-800 francs per inhabitant of cycling in Basel… that should have been a sufficient argument for years, right? So, if anything, cyclists should be paid out.
