What I question is the methodology used to determine the cost/benefit of heavier weights on roads and rail lines, and whether those who claim that trucks only pay 16.9% of their attributable road maintenance costs use that same methodology to determine if 286k cars can be run over light rail without similar constraints.

For clarification, we should remember that road funding comes in two segment shares - the federal portion and the state/local funding portion. The federal portion of road funding comes mostly in the form of the fuel tax/user fee, so in legit analysis trucks do pay their "fair share" of the federal side of the ledger. It is at the state and local levels where road funding can often come from non-user fees, aka property taxes, sales taxes, etc., and I suspect this is where the study cited by Ross muddies the water so to speak to reach the conclusion that trucks aren't paying their fair share.

The thing to remember is that state and local road funding goes mostly to state and local roads (Duh!), while the federal portion goes mostly to interstate (not to be confused with "Interstate") highways. And as we know, trucks are most critical to the nation's transportation system in those short haul lanes - farm to market, warehouse to retail outlet, etc. - that more often than not are state and local roads. So while one can argue that trucks don't pay their "fair share" of funding for those state and local roads, one must also remember that there usually is no other transportation option for those short hauls. No trucks, no food.

As for the EWG, my criticism of the State's takeover of that particular line lies in the fact that EWG's line runs counter to the logical commodity flow for it's entire length. Our wheat flows WSW to port, but EWG runs west to east. The rail run from Coulee City to Ritzville is three times as long as the direct highway routes, negating rail's logical efficiency gains vs trucking. As an economist, I'm not sure it is better to haul the grain to Ritzville by rail rather than by truck, e.g. the evidence doesn't support the notion that the State is saving any money on transportation maintenance costs.

It's a different scenario than that for the W&I and the PV lines, which do not run out of the way of the logical commodity flow to any great degree. Now, if BN had saved the Coulee City to Moses Lake portion of the EWG line so that grain could be hauled directly south to Connell and beyond, that would be a different story!