Pay to Play

While in De Pere yesterday and riding along their bike trail, I kept riding past these kiosks that something like "Pay Here". I didn't really know what this meant being new to the area, and I didn't really want to stop and interrupt my ride to find out. When got home last night, I Googgled "De Pere Bike Path" which took me to this page explaining what the signs were all about.

http://www.foxrivertrail.com/hours-fees-uses.htm

So it seems that as a bicyclist you need to pay a $3 daily fee or purchase an annual pass for a fairly nominal fee of $20.

My first reaction to this was not positive. I think like a lot of folks my first thought is "why is one more fee being imposed" as well as the feeling of who is going to get off of their bike, interrupt their ride and pay at one of these kiosks. Plus, how do you enforce something like this? Are we going to have an officer stop everyone riding their bike and ask them for their trail pass? And finally, there is part of me that says why are we imposing a fee on bicyclists? won't this discourage folks from a healthy activity like cycling? If we have a better community by people riding their bikes more (if you are reading this, you know all the arguments--more bikes equals less car traffic, less pollution, healthier citizens, etc), why do we effectively want to tax that activity and put another barrier in place to people participating in that activity?

I thought about this more last night though, and I'm starting to come to the viewpoint that charging a nominal fee is not just reasonable, but perhaps even a positive. I'm a big believer in that the person who gets the utility out of government service should be the person that pays for that service to be provided. If you use more water in your house than me, the City of Appleton will charge you more in your water bill. The amount of the service you use (in this case water) directly correlates with what you pay. In other words, if you are efficient, single or for whatever reason don't use much water, you pay less. The person who is wasteful or has a big yard to water or whatever else who uses a lot of water pays more. This is the way it should work.

When I first moved to Appleton a couple months ago, there was talk about building a convention center downtown (there probably still is--I just haven't heard about it for a while). This convention center was going to cost something like $30 million dollars which would of course be paid for through a tax increase. So lets analyze this. The plan is to build a convention center that the citizens of Appleton (and maybe surrounding communities) will pay for. The primary users of this convention center will be individuals from out of town--that is the point of having a convention center, to draw in conventions from out of town. The other main beneficiary of the convention center will be travel type businesses--hotels, restaurants, rental car companies, etc. How does this make sense? Most of the people that would be paying for the convention center (the taxpayers in Appleton) will probably never set foot inside of the convention center. So how are they deriving benefit from having a convention center here. Yes, I know there is an economic argument, more conventions would create more jobs. Mind you, mostly minimum wage jobs like hotel staff and restaurant staff, so once again, I'm not sure Appleton as a whole really benefits. This is the classic example of where one group reaps the reward of some activity and gets someone else to pay for it. Good deal if you can find it, but not the model of fairness.

So how does this relate to bike paths and fees. Well, as a cyclist, I derive the benefit of having a bike path there. I get utility out of having a bike path there, and judging by the number of people out yesterday, so do a lot of cyclist. So therefore, to me, it is only fair that I and other cyclists help to pay for the cost of having that amenity (the bike path) there. Building a bike path and maintaining it is not free. It seems to me appropriate to ask the people who use it to help to pay to maintain it.

This model isn't perfect for all services government provides. Certainly no one wants to say that you need to pay for Police or Fire services. And I think in general, we don't' want every city park to charge an admission fee. Otherwise, we risk becoming an elitist society where we have amenities available only to those who can afford to pay and not for other income brackets. Certainly one of the goals of things like City Parks and Bike Paths and the like is to have a place where the community can come together for recreation. If we charge a fee for everything or a fee that is too high, it takes the community out of that sentence. Turning parks and bike paths into a private country club is in no ones interest.

So in summary, I think asking folks to purchase an annual pass at a nominal fee is reasonable. Those dollars can help to maintain a clean and safe bike path, and maybe even go into making more such amenities available, like more bike paths or better facilities along the paths that already exist. But we should make sure the fees do not become a discouragement to people cycling or make it to where certain income groups are locked out from using the trail. That would be a shame, and do more harm to a community than a fee could hope to do good.

I'm interested in hearing others thoughts on this.