A follow-up to the above guesstimate of 140,000 boardings per year. If we divide those 140,000 boardings by Terry's stated figure of a bus doing 22,000X the damage of a car, that's about 6.4 boardings per day for the car. A number of cars do achieve that level of use each day, but does the average car? In any case, that puts buses squarely in the ballpark of automobiles in terms of road damage.

Over on another blog just yesterday there was a discussion about whether government agencies should pay one another various fees that the private sector pays, such as gas taxes or weight-mile taxes, or whether that's just moving numbers around without really changing the amount of money spent.

I actually think it would be a useful exercise if TriMet and other agencies did pay a gas tax (or an equivalent lump sum), if only to provide a clearer picture accounting-wise, and to make it easier to answer issues such as Terry's as to whether buses are disproportionately damaging roads (or not paying for the maintenance) in relation to private automobiles.