Steady there, George! -- Nothin' personal here.

I didn't see anything in the article that suggested banning trucks. Just that the cost of highway maintenance imposed per ton-mile of traffic goes up exponentially by the weight of the vehicles carrying it (raised to the fourth power). And actually, this is not new information. It was first promulgated in the late 1960s by the then TV consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who claimed that trucks were being unknowingly and heavily subsidized by automobile gas taxes; something he thought was unfair. He never mentioned in his writings the effect such a subsidy had on railroads. But I doubt he cared one wit about that anyway.

After considerable pressure from Mr Nader, it was later taken up in study by the ICC, which confirmed the numbers. Of course, because the ICC felt it lacked authority, it did absolutely nothing about it - except to keep studying it.

Since then, study after study by numerous agencies has confirmed this to be a fact. Indeed, even trucking industry associations have now accepted it as fact, and have proposed a general doubling of federal gas taxes to ease the resulting impending bankruptcy of the Highway Trust fund. Obviously though, it is a bit disingenuous to propose that all users pay equally; when the alternative is that most user fee increases would instead be paid by those businesses imposing the most maintenance costs.

This railway age editorial merely is suggesting that an across the board gas tax increase would actually transfer even more wealth from other highway users and taxpayers to the trucking industry. This happens because the true costs of doing business are already being paid by others, and this proposal would make that even worse.

Of course, those whose oxes are being gored by the current subsidy are going to squawk; whereas those receiving advantage would want it to continue as is. But it seriously affects all competitors of trucking that do not also having costs of doing business paid by others. And that hurts the general economy big time because such a hidden subsidy always distorts the marketplace, causing different business decisions to be made - sometimes even harmful ones.

Sometimes we we might politically choose that. But in this case, its unintended consequence is that considerable traffic is diverted to less efficient and less ecologically sound methods of transportation.

The probable result if this is ever corrected (not really likely); is not the banning of trucks, not at all, but merely a shift in competitive balance between trucking and other modes. Each mode would then have to concentrate one what each does best - a healthy thing!

There will always be a place for truckers.