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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper How could trucking be restricted to its natural short-haul market when most analysists that have any impartiality at all write that trucking pays onlly one-third to one-half the costs trucking imposes on the highway system? And on top of that the truckers get the highway without paying any real estate taxes on the land the highways occupy while railroads pay real estate taxes on their rights of way? But traffic is returning to the railroads because of highway congestion and lack of qualified drivers. But I am not sure that open access would, in the long run, result in the inequities being any less than they are now, just different, nor the traffic greater, in the long run. Unless increased subsidy of railroads in one way or another is part of the open access arrangement. [/quote] The idea that trucking only pays "one-third to one-half the costs" of their *actual* road damage is a fallacy. It makes no sense to include city streets, country roads, commuter lanes, bike paths, etc. in determining an actual allocation of the costs imposed by trucks on cross country highways. If we limit said highways to only those actually used for interstate transportation, then truckers do pay their fair share of road costs. That's only logical when we are trying to compare truckers' ROW costs vs railroad ROW costs. We shouldn't even count short haul trucker's road damage, because there is no railroad equivelent of a local distribution network. The railroads are totally dependent on trucks to get the goods from the point of origin and/or to the final destination, for all but maybe coal. If it was cheaper for trucks to haul over the highway rather than by TOFC, there would be no such thing as TOFC. The only times trucks go over the road is because there is no TOFC service being offered for that particular point to point haul. Since TOFC exists, it must mean that the costs truckers pay to use highways are higher than the costs to use the railroad. Assuming the railroads are charging a rate that covers their variable costs, an allocation of fixed costs, and some level of profit (which is debatable), then even the one true inequity between truckers and railroads (e.g. the fact that railroads pay property taxes on the ROW) does not amount to all that much comparitively. Could it be that (from a purely interstate highway perspective) truckers are actually paying more than their fair share of highway costs?
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