No, I’m not talking about the government’s take-over of our health care system or federally funded abortions. This is about our interstate highway system. The Washington Post has a great article on the I-81 death trap:
Last week was particularly bad. On a 15-mile stretch near the intersection with Interstate 66, there were four crashes in less than 10 hours between Thursday evening and Friday morning. The crashes involved nine tractor-trailers and two passenger vehicles and left two people dead and several injured.
Nine trucks and two cars? Why so many trucks?
Because the federal government subsidizes the Interstate Highway System.
We need to subsidize the railroads far more than we do, and get these long-haul trucks off the roads and replaced with trains. Truckers are allowed to drive ten hours per day. If we subsidized the railroads like we do the IHS, truckers would not even have routes longer than ten hours. Furthermore, trains are far more fuel efficient than trucks. The lower shipping costs would lower consumer prices. It might be one of the few thing on which government spending really would qualify as an “investment” with a real return on investment.
Replacing trucks with trains would reduce oil consumption, pollution, consumer prices, and traffic fatalities. What’s not to like?
I like your thinking, Jack. It matches my own for a long, long time. I happen to be a real fan of truckers and a long-time railroad buff –sort of schizophrenic in a way, considering the many decades of competition between the two.
Truckers do have their legal limits on driving and rest time, and the good ones follow those rules — or pay a price. There is, however, a great deal of delivery time pressure on them and pressure for themselves or their brokers to find another load to keep the bank account filled. This is especially so for independent owner/drivers. There are, of course, some who try to get away with disregarding the rules; but that is a fault in all of us in every profession. From what I can see, good truckers do not especially like the bad ones, who can give them all a negative reputation.
Trucking is a tough, tough job. You have to be a special breed to stay in that saddle so long and, especially for the long-haul guys, be away from hearth and home for such long stretches. Some people, however, do thrive on the “open road” freedom. One of the best things I have seen in this regard is the concept of husband-and-wife driving teams — good for the safety of the road and for the marital life.
I have purposely watched the activity in this regard on the open road. I have seen truckers who play it too close out there, but I have also seen many, many drivers of the “four-wheelers” who display no road common sense whatsoever in the vicinity of the big rigs. They seem to think that those rigs can be maneuvered as quickly as their Toyota or Subaru, and they ignore turning radius, mirror visibility, distance between vehicles, and a whole lot of other things. See an accident involving a big rig, and people automatically come down on the trucker. But, take a good look at the “four-wheelers” around you and tell me these people drive safely in this day and age — especially with a cell phone constantly at their ear. Moreover, it’s the people in the “four-wheelers” who do not have legal limits on their driving time on the interstates or other major highways.
As for the trains, we have spent the last fifty years or more consolidating and cutting the track mileage in this country, often because of the long-distance competition from the trucks. Railroads are now largely bulk carriers. The “less-than-carload” aspect is long gone, picked up by the door-to-door truck delivery system. Moreover, most of the customers no longer have either team tracks or in-service railroad spurs at their establishments. Some of the difference in trackage loss has been picked up by what they call the “regionals” — shortlines using former mainline trackage and usually older diesels discarded by the big guys. Some of these “regionals” have made a go of it; others are just scraping along, still fighting the trucks.
The railroads did fight back, beginning with trucks on flat cars and moving toward specialized Front Runners and toward container cars from which the containers could be off-loaded at major seaports or transferred to special container trucks at a major delivery point. They have also come up with the RoadRailer, which looks like a line of big rigs being pulled by a string of locomotives. You don’t see these things much around here; but go to Kansas and Nebraska along the BNSF or Union Pacific and you will see these things moving back and forth all the time between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast, along with the coal drags, the covered hopper unit trains, and the enclosed automobile cars. (Mrs. Wolverine and I have taken to calling the container trains shooting through Kansas the “fast track to China” or “from China”, whatever the direction is at the moment.)
Over the past few years, there have been some indications that the railroads have been making a comeback against the long-distance trucking industry. However, it seems to me that, in order to achieve a real balance, you are going to have to make a lot of adjustments in transportation thinking and spend a lot of cash to rehabilitate and/or expand the scope of the freight trackage, as well as the number of locos and cars. My own preference would be to establish truck ports all over the country where the railroads could deliver almost all our cargo on the mainlines and have it transferred quickly to the big rigs for specific delivery to customers. This would cut back on the long-distance truck hauls but still keep the truckers employed and busy — with the added feature that they would be able to go home to mama and kids at night and enjoy a home life like the rest of us. As I said, this is a personal dream; and I have no idea if we could ever change the scope of transportation in this way without a major mandate at the Federal level, including an initial Federal funding outlay to get it moving.
Wouldn’t privatizing Amtrack be a better way of improving our railroads?
RWK — Passenger service appears to be moving in the direction of high-speed trains. To my mind, you could not mix that trackage with freight trackage without creating a stop-and-go mess for either the freights or the passenger trains or both, depending on which trains are given priority of movement. You would also increase the risk for accidents. Even today, in those instances in which Amtrak uses the mainlines of our freight railroads, there is tension over priority of movement and keeping to schedules. It seems to me that we would need almost completely separate systems if we go for high-speed passenger service.
Why so many trucks ? The Virginia Inland Port perhaps..
http://www.portofvirginia.com/facilities/virginia-inland-port.aspx
One could argue that one reason for these accidents is the presence of the VIP rail lines.
There’s a fair number of rail improvements planned, including the I-81 corridor.
http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/
The Norfolk Southern Crescent Corridor (I-81) is the specific project:
http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/activities/files/Draft%20State%20Rail%20Plan%20Overview%20Presentation%207-14-08.pdf
Gives you an idea of the scope of it all, anyway.
I think the current vogue is for passenger rail, which is nice and all, but it’s the overall infrastructure that needs improvement. We’ll be spending money on more VRE rolling stock and ticket booths, while the congestion on the tracks just gets worse. Ever take a rail trip through Richmond? With all the freight cars backed up, you can get there faster on a bicycle …
Without the inland port, dans, there would just be that many more trucks on I-64, too.
With a major expansion of railroad freight service and the extensive establishment of inland rail-truck transfer terminals, you would, indeed, have many trucks on those arteries leading to the ultimate delivery destinations. However, these truckers would not be tired from a long-haul up the Valley or over the mountains and, I believe, less prone to mistakes leading to accidents. Might even be able to cut down on those monster double-trailers. Now, if we could just do a better job of training and disciplining those in the four-wheelers, we would really be getting somewhere in all this.
For those who think rail is the solution, take a look at the price tag, especially for passenger rail. The VA rail plan is estimated to cost somewhere around $5 billion. Rail will always be a niche mode of transportation. Most freight cannot be shipped by rail. It would either be too expensive or too slow. Rail expansion may take some trucks off the road, but roads like I-81 will continue to have problems.
As a frequent traveler on I-81, it is my opinion that the only solution is to add a third lane each way, especially in the most heavily travelled sections. How will it be paid for? The same way most other roads are paid for: fuel taxes. I am against higher taxes, but think of the gas tax as a user fee, same as a toll. Most folks would agree that user fees are a fair form of taxation. In theory, a higher fuel tax might have the benefit of encouraging conservation, which would take more cars off the roads. The state fuel tax has remained at 17.5 cents per gallon since 1986 and needs to be raised to pay for much-needed road improvements like widening I-81.
I agree, HE, that gas taxes are the fairest form of user fee. Two problems – the Trucking Industry goes ballistic, saying it will raise the price of *everything*.
And the liberals historically have opposed it, calling it a regressive tax on the poor, which is basically true – any user tax tends to fall disproportionately, as a percentage of income, on the ‘poor’. (Of course, it can be argued, these same people are consuming the same resources, so why are they exempt from paying their fair share? But that’s another issue..)
But things like Tax and Trade is a good indication of what the libs have planned for us, anyway – gas taxes are a punitive tax to deter us from “harmful practices” – in this case, driving a car. So, if they raised gas taxes by a buck a gallon (as President Obama said, the problem last year wasn’t the high price of gas, it was that it rose so fast – and prior to that, I’ve heard many libs state their desire that gas should cost $5 gallon or more), the money wouldn’t go to improving *roads* – that would simply be rewarding “bad behavior” – in their mind, it would be like putting a “sin tax” on alcohol purchases to subsidize the price of beer.
No, the money raised would go to:
- Rail improvements; of course, we still will have to drive to Union Station to catch a train
- “Green Energy” companies that have Al Gore on the Board,
- GM (“Government Motors”) cars made of cotton that run on ethanol,
- A program to subsidize the price of fire extinguishers (for when the GM cars burst into flames),
- A Program to buy jeans for the poor due to increases in the price of cotton,
- Increases in Food Stamps and WIC to account for the increase in food prices caused by the increased use of Ethanol,
- Increased ACORN funding, just because, and;
- Money to back mortgage loans to people with no provable income and illegal aliens, because ‘everyone has a right to own a home.’
Give the government more money, and they’ll spend it, all right. Just not where we want them to.
Most if not all rail lines are privately owned and operated. To compete with the interstate system which is publicly owned and operated, wouldn’t freight rail also have to be a public venture to compete on equal footing ?
The trucking companies are not public ventures, but the roads on which they travel are heavily subsidized.
The railroads should be similarly subsidized.
jack, meant to write :
“wouldn’t freight rail LINES also have to be a public venture”
Passenger rail service is, indeed, a niche business these days, except for certain major corridors and commuter lines. One thing is for certain though. You will never get the private freight majors to go back into the passenger business, something they gave up on long ago as a killing financial burden.
I disagree on the limitations to rail freight service. The railroads can carry a lot more than the bulk products they are now transporting, especially if you containerize the loads or leave such loads in the truck trailer. You take a long train of rail cars carrying truck trailers. At most such a train requires at any one time not more than two or three people to drive it, especially under the direction of a centralized and automated track and signal control system. Moreover, modern diesels are efficent machines and are growing ever more so from the aspects of both operating costs and the environment.
Now break that same train apart and put its load on the interstate. One or two trucks come off each flat car. Each truck has a driver, maybe two. Then put them all out there barreling down the interstate, sometimes on a parallel with the rail line itself. Train crews have driving time limits as well as truckers. But the train crew changes and the train moves on. The truckers have to stop and hole up somewhere to get their mandated rest periods.
Increases and improvements in trackage, additions of specialized rail cars and more diesels, and improvements in the speed of delivery would certainly take some big bucks for infrastructure redevelopment; but I believe it would pay off in the end in a good, comprehensive system and much safer interstates, not to mentioning saving bucks on the wear and tear on the interstate surfaces.
We are not going to get all the trucks off the interstates, but the whole idea is to get many of those trucks, along with the containers, on the trains for long-haul movement. I see from Squiddy’s references that Virginia is aiming generally in that direction by increasing the height of critical rail tunnels so that the double- and triple-stacked container cars can get through them. That is, in my opinion, an excellent move. Otherwise the same containers will be on special container chassis being hauled down the interstates by Peterbilts or Kenmores.
Speed of delivery? Certainly a bit of a loss until a full rail-truck combined system is in full working mode. Is saving lives on the highways worth that loss? We have become a damned spoiled bunch of people in this country. Got to have everything yesterday, no matter what the ultimate toll might be. Try watching a big rig labor through the West Virginia and Maryland mountains on I-68 loaded with a huge and heavy piece of machinery. Tell me why that huge piece of machinery cannot be on a depressed-well flat car on the CSX rail lines which run through those same mountains. Surely in this great country we can figure out a system that works efficiently to meet our needs and improve our own safety.
Truckers pay an 18.3 cent federal excise tax on a gallon of fuel and almost every state has fuel tax. As I mentioned earlier, VA is 17.5 cents, which is lower than most states. In addition, localities like Northern Virginia (2%)charge a tax. With 18-wheelers getting something like 7 mpg, they pay a lot in taxes for every run they make. They are not getting a free ride.
Railroads have to maintain their own track and probably do a more efficient job than the government does with our roads. I don’t see much of a “subsidy” advantage for the trucking industry.
The Association of American Railroads has some good stats on the types of freight carried by rail. Guess what is number 1? Nearly half their tonnage is coal. Most of the rest are heavy commodities that cannot be transported by truck.
Everyone pays those taxes, FedUp. If the trucking companies had to pay to build and maintain the roads on which they do their long-haul transports, they would not come close to competing with the railroads.
No, the trucks are not getting a free ride, but they are getting a heavily subsidized one. If we level that playing field, we’ll be better off.
Couple of interesting views :
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=8433
http://www.drivers.com/article/664/
Heavy rail costs about $25 million per mile, a mile of freeway in a rural area, $8 million. Interstates do seem to offer more bang for the buck.
“Everyone pays those taxes”
Yes, but filling up the average truck takes about 300 gallons. At 4.5-7.5 mpg, trucks pay more per mile.
Arguments on all sides. Something more in the middle might be a nice goal.
OK, here we go…
From my accountant days, trucks and buses must have authority to drive in each state, they must purchase a sticker, also known as a fuel permit for each state they travel in.
If you look at the side, usually the door you will see dated stickers for the states that they have paid for their fuel permits. If they don’t have a sticker they are traveling illegally in that state.
In addition to travel hours, the driver log books must have the state marked during those hours for quarterly fuel tax reports.
If a truck has authority to drive in Virginia but must make an emergency delivery in Delaware where they have no authority they must purchase temporary fuel permits to drive into those states. Maryland would charge $92.00 for a 3 day permit and Delaware a similar amount for a 72 hour permit.
If you don’t have a fuel sticker or temporary permit you are in a whole lotta of trouble.
Trucks and buses pay fees out of the &*#/ for road taxes.
Additional info: International Fuel Tax Association (IFTA) All apportioned vehicles must have valid IFTA stickers when they travel, to indicate that the proper fuel taxes have been paid to their base jurisdiction.
The term APPORTIONED on a license plate refers to an interstate vehicle, usually a truck or a tractor. When a truck has APPORTIONED plates on it, it pays road taxes to all the states it travels through – in proportion to how much of the time the truck is actually in that state. Thus, the tax fees are split up, or “apportioned”, between the states where the truck travels.
“n addition to travel hours, the driver log books must have the state marked during those hours for quarterly fuel tax reports.”
I meant the miles also must be logged.
After you have seen the documentation and reports required by trucks and buses, you wish that you only paid taxes on the fuel when you purchase it.
“Trucks and buses pay fees out of the &*#/ for road taxes.”
Yes, they do. But those fees still come nowhere close to the cost of building those roads.
jack,
You forget one very salient point, trucks do not have exclusive use of this infrastructure. I believe that if you look at taxes paid per mile driven, trucks pay a disproportionate sum compared to passenger vehicles.
If for some reason, truck freight were to be replaced by rail, the infrastructure used by the trucks would still be needed. But, it would be more of a public burden as it would no longer be financed in part by commercial trucking.
Wolv,
Yes, there are arguments on all sides, and this will continue. Maybe at some point in the future the rail industry might wake up and realize they will always have a dependency on trucks, and the trucking industry likewise for rail. These two industries really do have a symbiotic relationship.
I read a statistic that trucks represented some 13% of road miles, but paid 34% of user fees.
But then, consider the infrastructure wear they cost, and this stills seems to be an under-contribution: http://pavementinteractive.org/index.php?title=ESAL
…
“The relationship between axle weight and inflicted pavement damage is not linear but exponential. For instance, a 44.4 kN (10,000 lbs) single axle needs to be applied to a pavement structure more than 12 times to inflict the same damage caused by one repetition of an 80 kN (18,000 lbs) single axle.
…
* An 80 kN (18,000 lbs) single axle does over 3,000 times more damage to a pavement than an 8.9 kN (2,000 lbs) single axle (1.000/0.0003 ˜ 3,333).”
By the way, there’s a bill in the house (H.R. 1799) to increase truck vehicle weights from 80,000 pounds to 97,000 pounds, by adding a 6th axle. The trucking industry says this will improve safety as there will be fewer trucks on the road.
Good article, squiddy, but it does not even mention the damage that those vehicles cause when braking. Such damage can be seen all over the Washington area at bus stops. Trucks are far worse.
You forget one salient point, dans: that trucking companies do not, ultimately, pay those taxes; the consumers do. So get the trucks off the roads, and pay the taxes directly, rather than through the trucking company.
jack,
Not necessarily true, trucks carry both imports AND exports. Also, under your proposal, we would still pay taxes on these goods, but they would be carried on rail. While the tax on these goods remains constant, taxpayers are asked to pay increased excise taxes for interstate roadways, and increased federal subsidies for rail lines ? Yeah, that’s a plan.
While it may be true that a single truck has more of an impact on the roadbed than a single passenger vehicle, I would believe this to be a red herring. I believe what must be looked at is the commutative effect of all vehicles of each type. Scale matters.
“[Trucks] carry both imports AND exports.”
A propos of what?
“While it may be true that a single truck has more of an impact on the roadbed than a single passenger vehicle, I would believe this to be a red herring.”
It is not a red herring at all, but a main point. The trucks arguably do more damage than they pay for.
Assuming the above-mentioned stats are correct, and assuming 30,000 lbs empty weight and a half-load, that’s a total of 55,000lbs. For convenience, we’ll drop that to 50,000lbs. Distributed over 5 axles is 10,000lbs each. The average car is 5,000lbs, or 2500lbs per axle.
Of course, the trucks are using tandem axles, so we assume 10,000 lbs for the front axle (because its in the table) and 20,000 lbs for each of the two tandem axles. Going to the tables in squiddy’s link, we get a truck at 0.442 ESAL, and a car at 0.0015.
So, vastly underestimating the average weight of the trucks, we get:
Trucks: 13*0.442 = 5.75 ESAL
Cars: 87*0.0015 = 0.13 ESAL
So, trucks pay 34% of the taxes (which they pass on the the consumers), and do 97% of the damage. And the roads have to be built to withstand such stress in the first place, so they cost more to build.
All I’m saying is that if we subsidize the building of railroads as we have truck roads, allowing the trains to compete on an equal footing with the trucks, the trains will take the majority of the long-haul freight off of our highways, reduce traffic deaths, improve overall fuel consumption, and even reduce consumer prices as the cost of shipping declines.
Speaking of imports and exports and their transportation, there is a question in my mind which has always bothered me. Unfortunately, I have yet to take the time to search for a factual answer.
A couple of years ago, I took a camera and stood beside a mainline of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe (BNSF) running through a place called Gardner, Kansas — one of those so-called “hotspots” for railroad buffs. As I watched and photographed the frequent passage of the trains in both directions, many, many of them container unit trains, I wondered for a moment what could be in those containers heading west in the direction of the Pacific Coast. I was disturbed by the uncomfortable thought that the containers heading east toward Kansas City and points beyond were filled with imported goods from China and other Far East countries and that many of the containers headed west were empty, intended for our Pacific Coast ports for reshipment to those places where our consumer goods are actually made.
This was at the time a real downer. Were my suspicions right? Someday I’ll have to find the time to investigate. Meanwhile, anyone out there who has some knowledge which can be applied to my supposition? Are those westbound containers largely empty — the sad result of a nation losing its industrial base?
“I wondered for a moment what could be in those containers heading west in the direction of the Pacific Coast”
Breast implants ?
““I wondered for a moment what could be in those containers heading west in the direction of the Pacific Coast”
Breast implants ?
No. Eastern illegals being deported back to California. The broken ones go back to China.
Could be, Dans. On the other hand, just where do they manufacture botox in this country?