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[quote user="Railway Man"] I did? Could you cite me the studies that say that trucking pays its fair share of the incremental costs that aren't produced by or paid for by the trucking industry, please.  AASHTO says otherwise.  Also, why do you want it to be incremental instead of fully allocated? The statement "the investment in most forms of transport infrastructure have been paid for by the users" strikes me as broad.  Are you referring only to the U.S.?  What about water transportation?  If I recall correctly, riverine transportation does not pay for but a fraction of its infrastructure.  What about seaports?  Are they all self-funded?  That leaves what else ... buses, probably not; trucks, probably not; light rail and heavy rail, probably not; personal autos, probably yes; freight railways, probably yes; airlines, who knows.  I can't add that up to "most" if we assign each mode a value of 1, but if we add up the total infrastructure investment made to date in discounted dollars, maybe it's a plurality.  Would you be considering the lands withdrawn from the tax rolls for the streets in the accounting? RWM [/quote] This issue is whether investment in high speed rail is the best way to spend the stimulus grant.  I don't think that it is.  I would use it to improve regional rail in short, high density corridors where there is a good chance of recovering the operating costs and contributing something to the capital costs. Citing investments in other transport infrastructure was meant to show that the costs could be recovered and, in fact, especially with respect to air and highway, have been.  Given the poor financial performance of passenger trains, I don't think that they can recover their capital costs, especially high speed rail, although that is not the only criteria I would use for investment. A discussion of trucks, in retrospect, is off topic.  I said simply that there are studies pro and con with respect to whether they cover their fair costs.  If your concerned about the veracity of the studies, I am sure that you can find them.
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