But it’s such a cute idea… what’s a few million per year matter anyway. After all the money wasted on the bus and narrowed streets… who’s gonna notice.

@ J Smith;

thanks for the link, but it sounds like soft science to me. The proposed $4.36 gas tax is to offset the negative social impacts of those evil cars. The proposed gas tax was increased to help offset a lower rate of labor taxes which the author felt was more harmful to society. So he is taking the liberty to side step the purpose of the article to focus on the cost of cars and throw a bone to the workers party and suggest those who drive cars should pay some portion of the employment taxes of those who dont. A wealth transfer from car owners to bus riders.

Study also suggest that more fuel efficient vehicles will increase the social costs of driving and justify even higher gas taxes???

Really??? smaller cars, less pollution results in more social harm???

The whole concept of the article is am expanded version of a carbon tax for those who hate cars, and the study suggests without cars we will have healthier pregnancies and babies? Really the author had to throw in the “think of children” heart string.

If you pick on bikes, you have to pick on cars too. J. Smith is correct, cars have been subsidized from the very first day they laid down asphalt for them, specifically. We have erected a massive infrastructure for the auto. Freeways were sold as a Defense implement after WWII. So was the Internet.

Now, Boise City obviously wants to have a uniform bike programs with shiny new bikes and racks, etc. I would have been ok with the City going to The Boise Bike Project and having them put together a fleet of refurbished bikes for use by the public. But that would have been a non starter….probably because of the sweet deals being conducted in the background.

Nobody ever said the bikeshare program would make money.

More importantly, why administer the program by Valley Ride?
And is the project well run?

Boise parks & rec would be much more appropriate place to deal with it.

I do like seeing people actually using those bikes.

From the article about Seattle’s system… the budget problems have been caused by administrative costs plus overly optimistic projections about ridership and advertising sales.

How does that compare with Boise’s effort, after the first year in operation? How many rides? What does the balance sheet look like, in early ’16? Inquiring minds want to know. I went to the website, but it doesn’t have much in the way of hard numbers. (The startup was paid using a federal grant… you know, from the federal government aka TAXPAYERS, who everybody knows are flush with surplus cash! /sarcasm)

I’ve been an advocate of the program… as long as the ongoing operating costs can be recovered from system users and sponsors (no tax dollars). I’ve also been skeptical that they can do it – most Boise residents can afford a bicycle and somewhere to store it (unlike the Big City), and I don’t know if the tourist trade and occasional users can sustain it. I would LOVE to be proven wrong!

JSmith, I am not confused, I just don’t think the idea that we can attach social costs to everything is an idea that is feasible, nor logical, and the model used by car-haters to apply a true cost of the car based on their belief of its social impacts is the same logic our politicians use to sell their pet ideas that don’t pencil.

Obama-care was not to cost a penny, remember we were promised it would pay for itself by avoiding the social costs we incur from a portion of the population being uninsured and unhealthy. Now that Obama-care is actually costing billions a year and health exchanges are failing and closing, how did that work out?

Politicians and activists dreamed up social cost accounting, when real accounting didn’t support their agenda.

If we sum up the social costs of all our decisions (alcohol, tobacco, fast food, bio fuels, hydro plants, nuclear plants, coal plants, roads, cars, air conditioning, motorcycles, homes, cows destroying the ozone, air travel, soda pop, children, etc) we end up with a negative economic value added for the human race. So let’s save the planet and slit our wrists.

A second issue, is even if we paid the true social costs of cars through gas taxes, you can not trust the government to properly manage those funds. The 1998 Tobacco Settlement Agreement is a prime example. Between 1998 and 2010 States collected $244 Billion dollars from the tobacco industry, and per the settlement the funds were to be used for the social costs of tobacco, mainly help fund medicaid and anti-smoking education. A report by the CDC in 2010 concluded that only 2.4% of the funds was being used for the intended purpose of the settlement, the remainder was put into state’s general funds for a variety of unrelated programs.

To bring it back to the topic of green bikes…. the argument for public funding of these bikes (and other alternative transportation) is such programs are worthy investments of public funds (our taxes) because the community gets a return on our investment since these options provide for a healthier population which results in cost avoidance. But the math behind these arguments rarely works out, which is why all the consultants use forecasts and assumptions, because they lack actual examples where the promised benefits have been realized.

As an aside, what is the social costs of bikers burning their feces in the foothills and starting wildfires? Is it the bike or act of defecation we should be taxing to fund our wildfire programs?

Isn’t there many many bridges they could be spending this wasted money on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74JNl5n-YdI