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[quote user="joe-daddy"][quote user="futuremodal"] Well, we'd have to adjust the truck taxes down.  Trucks pay more than their fair share.  The problem is that so much fuel tax revenue is diverted to pork boondoggles (aka the Big Dig), mass transit (here's an idea - LETS MAKE TRANSIT USERS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!), neighborhood sewer projects, that sort of thing.  How about we just use fuel tax revenues for our intercity roads, and let other taxes pay for that other stuff? [/quote]This is just impossible for me to believe.  A fully loaded truck weighs more than 20 times more than a fully loaded automobile.  Automobiles subsize the roads. That is a long known but seldom discussed fact, due in large measure to the polical impact of the truck lobby.  <a href="http://www.ocianews.com/reports/freight.pdf">http://www.ocianews.com/reports/freight.pdf</a> "Studies have found that one 80,000-pound truck puts as much wear and tear on a road as 9,000-10,000 cars. Heavy-truck traffic results in greater costs to maintain existing facilities and the need to provide  increased structural strength on new and rehabilitated roads and bridges." [/quote]Think real hard about what you just relayed here - "one truck = 10,000 autos".  From the persective of road wear and tear, that is absolutely one of the dumbest statements ever to come from a "study".Fact - most wear and tear on roadways comes from contact friction of tire on pavement, not weight per axle.  The more tires that run over pavement, the more that pavement surface will degrade.  Add studded tires for the northern areas..........Fact - most road construction budgets are focussed on new alignments, adding lanes, that sort of thing.  Aka, it's related to pure traffic volumes, not a plethora of heavy haul vehicles.  The maintenance budgets are mostly spent on wear and tear from such traffic volumes, combine that with natural aging of roadway surfaces, the winter/summer dynamic............Here's the thing - when you talk about moving freight from trucks to rail, have you really considered whether or not that freight is actually optimized for rail movement?  Do you concede that much of the trucking ton/miles is in those "last mile" corridors, aka delivery to the retail level, something railroads aren't set up to do?  Or try this for size - when you allege that "trucks don't pay their fair share" for roadway budgets, don't you realize that with branchline abandonments much of that freight used to move by rail?  Should we make the railroads "pay their fair share" of roadway budgets since they have deliberately transfered that freight from rail to truck?I know a lot of county commissioners that would like to tax BNSF and UP for the increase in road maintenance budgets due to either branchline abandonmetns and/or a loss of decent rail service on the remaining branchline trackage!There is no evidence to suggest that forcing more freight from truck to rail would have somehow prevented the I-35W bridge collapse.  To infer such a thing is irresponsible.
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