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I typed the URL you referred to into my browser, and my ISP said that there is no such address.  Is this a paper you are writing or is it a paper that someone else has put together?  If you are writing it, what are your qualifications, i.e. accountant, economist, engineer, etc.? Whatever the country has spent on highways is, at least from an accounting sense, sunk costs. They cannot be taken back. The decision rolling forward is how should the U.S. allocate public transport dollars?  Where do passenger trains make sense in the public transport panoply?    If you want some insight into how highways in the U.S. are financed, The Highway Trust Fund and Paying for Highways, CBO report dated May 17, 2011, is an excellent overview. In FY11 Amtrak's long distance trains lost $615.4 million of real money. The Crescent lost $46.1 million. And that is before considering depreciation, interest, and ancillary charges. It also does not include the cost of most the stations used by the Crescent, which are paid for by the communities where the train calls, sometimes offset by nominal rents, or that Amtrak pays no taxes whatsoever. Even if funding for highways is opaque, as it is to a certain extent, and even if it is skewed in favor of rubber tire vehicles, which may have been or is the case, many folks in these forums miss a key point. Americans want cars and trucks because in most instances they are the optimum option. They are not going to give them up even if it costs them more than riding public transit or an intercity train, bus, or airplane. People will use public transit where the congestion associated with driving is so great the frustration level becomes overwhelming or the cost prohibitive, but at least in Texas they are not going to give up driving willingly. Nations, states, people, etc. make decisions beyond pure economics. Psychology plays a big role in their decision making, as the behavioral economists are lifting up. Keynes was one of the first to recognize this fact.   You could prove beyond a shadow of doubt that highways, waterways, and airways have been over funded at the expense of rail, but outside of these forums, as well as NARP, no one cares.
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