Topic #1: Mark's article and highway congestion

[gabe]

I guess I am special.

[motor]

I don't get the new Trains until a day or two after the 1st of the month.

motor

[Modelcar]

...New TRAINS magazine already...! I look forward to reading the article indicated above, sounds like a good subject to be discussing. I'll start looking in the mailbox a week or 10 days from now for my issue....
...Ammended: 11-29-04....Wow, new January TRANS arrived today. Can't remember it being received that early recently...! [:0]

[gabe]

I received my Trains magazine yesterday, and--of course--read Mark's article regarding "subsidies for all or subsidies for none," to paraphrase.

First, I think it was a great article because it really stimulated my thinking on the subject.

I largely agree with the gravamen of the article's contentions. However, I am curious about what the readers, and Mark, think about the growing phenomenon of highway congestion in relation to the article's contention?

If conditions stay the way they are now, I think Mark's contention is unassailable. However, I have seen growing evidence that highway congestion is approaching "the knee of the curve" with regard to how much is required to be spent in order to keep highway congestion at a minimum. In other words, even if the government continues to subsidize truckers through highway construction, the cost of doing so is going to start growing, causing highway taxes to increase and causing a less-favorable environment for trucking.

It is no longer simply a matter of building new highways. There are growing choke points, which either preclude further highway construction or cause it to be considerably more expensive to do so—there are only so many highways you can build in a city.

In short, when highway congestion "redlines," wont trucking rates rise either as a result of outright congestion or much higher taxes, and rail’s advantage of being able to add capacity more cheaply be able to be taken advantage of even if railroads are not subsidized?

Gabe