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Q7: Why would it be unfair to tax people for cycling?
Most cyclists already pay for the roads one way or another (including roads they rarely or can’t use) and for damage they don’t cause, and the charge would be probably £0 anyway.
It would be unfair to ‘tax’ people for cycling, because:
• Almost all adult cyclists are motorists too42 so already contribute to the Government’s budget for roads anyway. • Most cycling – 82% – on British roads takes place on minor roads, which most adult cyclists help pay for via their local council tax, like almost everyone else. • Much of the hypothecated revenue from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) funds the strategic road network (SRN), i.e. roads which cyclists either can’t use (motorways), or roads they are much less likely to use (strategic major roads). 43 • If cycles had to be registered, the first VED payment would be £0, because they do not emit CO2 (there is no charge for zero emission cars either, when they are first registered). Although the subsequent charge is not based on CO2 emissions, the likely rate for bikes would probably also be £0, given the £0 rate for electric cars.44 • Cycling inflicts nowhere near the damage that motor vehicles do to road infrastructure. This costs £millions to repair each year: damage from vehicles passing over the surface is generally estimated to be proportional to the weight over the axle to the power of four.
Thus, a car with 500kg weight over each axle does over 15,000 times the damage of a 90kg rider + bike.
42 Data from DfT response to Cycling UK’s Freedom of Information request, 28 January 2022. 43 According to the DfT’s Roads funding information pack (2020), funds from English VED are ‘hypothecated’ – i.e. earmarked for roads spending through a ‘National Roads Fund’. The original ‘Road tax’, which had often been raided for other purposes, was abolished in the 1930s. Winston Churchill, as a backbencher, said that it was a “monstrous assertion that any important body of taxpayers should claim proprietary rights over the particular quota of taxation which they contribute”. After that, motor vehicle taxes were paid into the Government’s general bank account but, in 2015, the link between these taxes and major roads spending was, to all intents and purposes, reintroduced through the new hypothecation arrangement for VED revenue. For more, see House of Lords Library, Funding roads: Coming full circle? 44 Vehicle Tax Rates
