It’s like riding a bike

A committee from the City Club of Portland has proposed there should be a 4 percent tax on all new bicycle sales within the city. I know that you, reader, are either gasping in shock or laughing, and maybe even applying an ice pack to your head to relieve the mildly irritating headache this absurdity causes.

The City Club claims that the taxes will go to pay for bicycle safety, but nothing will go to the crumbling infrastructure, including the enormous potholes and lack of pavement restoration on bike thoroughfares.

Instead, the City Club believes we need more bicycle counters like the one on the Hawthorne Bridge. I say, if you want to count bicycles, go stand somewhere in the city and count them. I refuse to pay for your curiosities.

Not only would this tax discourage people from spending money on new bikes within the city, which is the main reason Portland still has mom and pop bike stores, it shames the bike city philosophy as a whole.

Bikes are a sustainable form of transportation—unlike public transit, unlike electric cars and unlike Portland’s Prius army. We either raise the tax on cars (the real culprits behind the necessitation for infrastructure updates and care) or there will be a longer list of names on the resulting petition than any lawmaker would be willing to count.

You know what, City Club of Portland? I say you propose a tax on new running shoes, or maybe skateboards. We really need new infrastructure for both of those. We Portlanders are in dire need of more educational programs about how safe it is to ride a bike in Portland.

In all seriousness, we should install some stroller counters to make sure that we can keep track of how many strollers are crossing the Hawthorne Bridge.

Wait, scratch that, City Club of Portland; let us propose a tax on new strollers and new rollerblades. Actually, everything that rolls (but won’t for much longer, if the taxes don’t even pay for infrastructure upkeep).

Let’s go ahead with it, promote the buying of recycled bikes and parts, help yuppie, elitist bike-porn addicts slow their roll and discourage small-business growth. This is exactly the kind of tax we’re looking for.

Taxing healthy behavior is the politician’s final frontier. There has been every sin tax imaginable slapped upon cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking, among many other unhealthy acts, so why not go after those we can’t quite milk enough out of?

Let’s go ahead and tax new exercise clothing while we’re at it, or add a sin tax to food with too many calories. Coming from a city where you have to have a bachelor’s degree to work in a coffee shop, I find it hard to believe that a tax this utterly misdirected made it up the totem pole to those who have the power to influence public opinion.

This seems as though it’s more of a tax for greenie sustainability bragging rights for Portland than a seriously beneficial public service. Go ahead, impose taxes on the forward-thinking. Let’s corporatize until we’re yellow in the eyes. And for all of you who are interested, let us please start a bike-counting club. Sounds like a real fruitful use of time.