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So apparently some legislator in New Hampshire wants a mandatory $50 bicycle registration fee or something:
As is generally the case with these things, the idea behind it is that if these pesky cyclists want bike lanes and bike paths and other useless crap like that then they should have to pay for it themselves:
Walsh said there are details to his plan he expected to change, but that the basic logic of the bill should be familiar in a state where vehicle registration fees help pay for transportation projects.
“Let’s do this fair. If we have a bunch of modes, let’s look at the user of the mode to pay,” Walsh said. “You either agree with the user fee theory or you don’t. I happen to.”
Okay, obviously I’m completely against bicycle registration fees, and obviously they’re dumb. There’s this idea that people who ride bicycles are somehow exempt from taxes and should incur some sort of punitive surcharge for their freeloading ways, which is especially silly since here in Canada’s unfettered id most people who ride bikes also own and operate motor vehicles and pay all the associated fees anyway. And sure, sometimes municipalities build recreational paths and stuff that are only for cyclists, but they also build stuff like public running tracks and swimming pools, and I’ve never heard anyone argue that you should have to pay a registration fee for your sneakers or your bathing suit. (Though arguably some people should be fined for wearing swimming costumes in public.)
But of course the main reason I object to mandatory bicycle registration fees is that riding a bicycle should be an easy and accessible option for anyone who wants to do it and that there should be as few obstacles as possible for those who choose to do it.
And yet…
I’m [XX] years old now, and I’d be lying if part of me doesn’t find the idea of a bicycle registration fee appealing. However, I think if you’re going to do it, you shouldn’t dick around. $50? Please. What is that, a few inner tubes bottles of sealant? Why not go all the way? Bicycle registration should cost $1,000 per year at a minimum, though I could maybe get behind something like a $100 surcharge for each additional bicycle, or for any bike operated by a rider under 18 years of age. (Maybe those under-18 registration fees could be determined by wheel size, though then you’d have people riding Bromptons as a workaround.)
So what’s my reasoning here? Well, since this is 2026 and people take everything literally, I’ll remind you once again that I’m completely against bicycle registration fees. However, I am old and ornery, and as the part of me that cares about other people shrivels up and dies I do increasingly wonder if maybe this whole “cycling should be accessible” thing was a bit of a mistake.
I’m not sure when the concept of making cycling accessible and easy for people was invented, but I only came across it after I started this blog in 2007. See, my experience with riding bikes as a child was that you had to stay alert at all times because your bike was liable to be stolen at any moment, plus of course there was the ever-present danger of getting run over by a car. (I know you’re supposed to say run over by a driver, not a car, but when you’re that age a car really is just a free-roaming wildebeest and something you instinctively avoid.) Then as I got older I started racing BMX, where kids would make fun of your clothes if you didn’t have the right gear, and where if you crashed they’d just ride right over you. So by the time I was an adult I had no trouble with the idea of riding around in a hostile urban environment, or with the hidebound world of road cycling, or with the concept that if you got dropped on a group ride 50 miles from home and you had no idea where you were then tough shit, that was your problem.
But then I started this blog, were I mostly made fun of all the new fixie riders who were suddenly everywhere. Certainly this was the natural order of things, right? I’d paid my dues, and now it was my turn to ridicule the clueless. Hey, how else would they learn? Still, every so often a reader would point out, “Hey, these hipsters may be silly and clueless, but at least they’re riding,” or “Hey, that bike sure seems ridiculous to me, but whatever gets people riding is a good thing.” And I’ll be darned if I didn’t find myself agreeing with them.
At the same time, the city too seemed to think that anything that got people riding was a good thing. They also picked up on this radical new idea that you should be able to ride a bike without getting run over, and so they fixed all the bridges and built these things called “bike lanes.” Seemingly overnight my cycling world was transformed from one characterized by resourcefulness and self-sufficiency into one in which people considered being able to ride around on a My Little Pony-themed bike with no brakes in a protected bike lane free from both ridicule and grievous bodily harm to be a reasonable expectation.
But are we really better off for having so vilified the concept of the “barrier to entry?” Maybe some barriers is a good thing. I mean, what do we have to show for it, anyway? Bikes have to be electronic now, because you can’t have anything that’s “distracting” to new riders:
Oh, they also have to have electric motors, so kids don’t have to pedal too hard, and so parents don’t have to wait for their kids:
And why shouldn’t some club team Strava wanker feel perfectly entitled to sit on the wheel of one of the world’s best professional cyclists instead of minding his freaking business?
You know where all this has gotten us, this idea that everyone should participate and nothing should be hard and no place should be off limits to bikes? It’s gotten us to THIS FREAKING THING:
Maybe a $1,000 registration fee is exactly what we deserve.
