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Local government finances are so dire, it is leisure to consider — and enact — an annual fee on bicyclists.

A $25 annual fee for owning a bike is a idiot result of the enormous amounts of trails, lanes and accommodations the space has made to cyclists. Those funds would be useful for local cities and King County. It would also make cyclists true members of the world of transportation, in preference than free riders on the tax rolls.

Special licenses are not newly come. We warrant dogs, our cars, our boats, our motorcycles, our pleasures in hunting and fishing, since well as many other outdoor activities. Cyclists, known for their community sprite and exalted senses of self, should welcome this suitable to help government support their activities.

A unmixed inquisition of current and future bike trails shows a remarkable generosity on the part of Puget Sound taxpayers. Whenever new transportation projects are studied, bike lanes are as automatic like white striping.

In 2012, for example, cyclists and pedestrians will have trails 14-feet wide in SoDo niggardly the stadiums. Any Highway 520 floating bridge schematic includes a lane for cyclists. How about if they help pay their apportioned lot? If Interstate 90 and Highway 520 bridges are tolled, it’s only logical to expect cyclists to pay a modest toll, too, by reason of access to a great path across the water and spectacular views.

Seattle went through a lengthy continued movement of enhancing the Burke-Gilman Trail through industrial Ballard. Among the pretzel routes, all were made to make cycling as easy as possible. Those costs, born through the industries of Ballard and the incorporated town, could be offset by a modest be a good investment.

Asked Friday if Seattle has at all tax on cyclists, Mayor Greg Nickels admitted no, but said he thought there was a bicycle license fee in the 1940s, clearly a precedent.

On the Eastside, cyclist organizations were heavily involved in the creation of the Lake Sammamish Trail, a wonderful course betwixt Redmond and Issaquah. But an annual fee would render the encumbrance on the body politic and direct fees toward the user group. That’session the way bureaucrats talk when they propose things like another nickel on the elastic fluid tax.

Cyclists, the most flourishing of our inhabitants, would embrace the annual fee schedule as a way of ensuring more proactive cycling mode of action before our various the stage and commissions. I am sure the King County Council, beset by weighty tax shortfalls, would welcome this occasion to bring cyclists to the fee-based premise of future county funding. Same inanimate object for City Hall, where cyclists enjoy a strong representation, which has prompted the city to earmark millions of dollars for more bike lanes and paths. Twenty-five bucks a year for each cyclist is a bargain in trade.

In the same sense, Critical Mass, the foretaste congregation of cyclists who sometimes take over our streets, would be beneficial to jurisprudence and order. A Critical Mass accumulation of cyclists would allow Seattle police to quick spot those who have a bike permit and those who do not, with appropriate fees and penalties.

King County before that time imposes a user fee put on cyclists. It’s illegal to ride a bike out of a armor because of the head — something dads and their children should remember as they take to the sidewalks on those elementary trips by Christmas bikes. Yet the contributions to the cycling common by the locality greatly outweigh the return from those healthy bikers. Cycling organizations should exist the first to recognize their members’ application of urban and suburban pathways is also the pathway to street credentials with other members of the public.

Those organizations are powerful. Bicyclers thwart the region are known as accommodating and uncomplaining — in the manner that long as they get their track. Now is the time for them to show it by contributing to the public trough.

Will any of this happen? No, because from my perch, I don’t know of a single, elected public official with the guts to propose a bike tax.

James F. Vesely’s array of less front than depth appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, avail to Opinion at www.seattletimes.com/edcetera