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[quote user="blue streak 1"] [quote user="Sam1"]So the government no only recoups the cost of the highways through the fuel taxes, it gets a payback through the higher taxes paid by more profitable commercial users.    [/quote] SAM: I believe the conventional wisdom is that trucks do not pay for the maintenance. An 80,000# tractor trailer is considered to cause much more dmage than they pay for in taxes and user fees. I forget the figures but it is something like 240 times a 5000# car and about 800 times a sub compact car. I believe it is some kind of exponential curve.  Remember the threads on here that talked about how much more roadbed, track, mtc., etc that is needed to go from RR cars of 286,000# to 315,000#. Any of our highway engineering people have the exact figures?  [/quote] Transportation experts have long recognized that trucks cause more wear and tear on highways than automobiles.  This is why the taxes and fees for them are considerably higher than those for autos. For example, whilst the federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents a gallon, the tax on diesel fuel, which is the primary fuel for heavy trucks, is 24.4 cents per gallon.  Interestingly, some states have a higher tax on diesel, although a few of them have a lower tax. The question is whether the higher fuel taxes and fees cover the incremental damage done by trucks.  The American Trucking Association can cite studies showing that the higher taxes and fees cover the incremental damage; other studies (Texas Transportation Institute) show that they do not.     Most users of common access facilities claim that they pay more than their fair share to use the facilities.  The airlines, for example, claim that they pay a disproportionate share of the cost of the federal airways.  This may be true. The key point, however, is that the users of the nation's transport facilities, which were jump started by the federal and state governments, have or are paying for them in most instances. I don't believe the promotors of high speed rail have a prayer's chance of recovering the investment.  I don't think they can even recover their operating costs.  This is why I am opposed to using government money to build a high speed rail network, especially a national one.
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