>>1867327The issue anon complained about was licenses and taxes not raising revenues sufficient to cover the cost of repairing the damage, creating moral hazard and de facto subsidy whereas rail fares, charges, and access fees more closely correspond to the cost of keeping the infrastructure up and running. That problem can absolutely be solved. As you point out, doing so would not cause mass abandonment of road transport, but it would limit shippers' free lunches and more properly match costs to those inflicting them.
>they would run like they do in AustraliaMost trucks in Australia ply the routes between the major metropolitan areas on regular Australian motorways. Road trains are epic but their use case doesn't generalize.
> but rarely sees it happen is staggering And that's fine, to an extent, depending upon the level of excess capacity and whether there are any real prospects of it being used, even in a war scenario.
> trucking companies would not be able to sustain it on their ownFunding structures are set up so that busy routes subsidize everything else; every other argument aside the strength of networks isn't a matter of mere addition or subtraction, so those little lines contribute more than they seem to.
