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Comment by ranrotx | Hacker News Reader

Car owners pay registration fees and and gas taxes for the privilege to use the public roadways. Bird and the like just dumped their property (which makes them money) on public right-of-ways without paying for the use like every other industry does.

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That is not so easy to say, the division of taxes/cost vary by jurisdiction. Where I live, gas taxes go to provincial government which maintains only highways. Municipalities have to build/maintain urban roads, and their only funding source is property taxes (which are paid by everyone, regardless of car ownership (or scooter club membership))

I've heard this argument before too that Bird is a private, for-profit company. The company itself isn't riding around on the scooters, real people are riding them to solve real transportation needs. I don't see why it matters what kind of payment plan they're on for their transportation. Should leased cars not be allowed on the road either?

Not sure where to start about taxes, but for one thing we came pretty close to repealing the gas tax in CA a few months ago so that doesn't seem to be a necessary condition. And some people just happen to pay almost no property tax at all because they got here first (prop 13) but they still get access to all the same schools and fire and police services. Taxes are paid by the public at large, to benefit the public at large, you're not paying for the specific services you're using when you pay taxes. In fact it's exactly the opposite, these things are public goods.

In addition as other comments mentioned, the scooter companies are paying registration fees and taxes. At least in some cities, and I'm sure if they stick around it'll soon be in all cities.

> but for one thing we came pretty close to repealing the gas tax in CA a few months ago

That was a recent increase to the gas tax that was up for repeal, not the whole gas tax.

Yeah, parent comment neglected the fact that drivers are paying via taxes and fees. Those may not be sufficient to pay for external costs, but that's how the roads are typically paid for.

Roads are paid for, in large majority, by property taxes. Gas taxes and registration fees don’t even come close to half.

You might be paying taxes and fees to license them but you could well have paid nothing to that city. I can drive through your city (unless you have tolls or entry passes, but the vast majority of cities don't have those). I can just use your streets for free.

There are federal, state and local taxes on transportation fuels. So sure, if you drive through the city without filling up your car there then you got a free ride on that city's roads, but not the state and interstate highways leading to it. But that's one of those things that averages out due to large numbers, and where it doesn't there is usually some rebalancing of revenues by government entities.

State routes? You probably are driving on a state route to/from that city. Also, cities can get funding from the state for road projects, so they do get access to this pool of money.

By this logic people shouldn't be able to walk on streets, nor ride their bicycles, nor drive in places we haven't paid taxes?

If it were correct. The overwhelming majority of road costs are paid through property taxes.

where I live, a car, even a large one, is like $200/yr to register. If you want a bedroom the size of a car? you'd pay more than $1000/month.

so while they are licensed, they are certainly not paying market rates for the use of these right of ways.

This is why it is so much cheaper to live in a roadgoing vehicle than to live in a similarly sized rental room in spite of the hugely lopsided maintenance cost difference between the two options.

in Austin they (Bird/Lime/Uber/Lyft/etc...) pay a license fee to the city.

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