Without the roads there would be no deliveries. No deliveries, no industry. No industry, no jobs. So of all the things to call it, a trucking subsidy seems a very loaded description.
But more to the point, actual trucking costs would increase the appeal of trains for long haul, while keeping trucks (possibly smaller) for shorter hops between train depots and distribution centers (aka stores).
What else would you call the artificial lowering of trucking and truck-hauled goods prices through passing a significant subset of trucking costs directly onto taxpayers instead of reflecting said costs in hauling prices?
> Without the roads there would be no deliveries. No deliveries, no industry. No industry, no jobs.
I'm not sure what comment you're replying to here, but it certainly isn't mine.
Not at all. Axle load has a completely outsized impact on road wear. Civil engineers use a fourth power law to estimate road wear with respect to axle load: if you double the mileage you double road wear, but if you double the axle load (assuming constant axle count) the road wear is multiplied by 16.
Put in numbers, a Model S has an axle load of 1T (2T on 2 axles). A fully loaded 18-wheeler is limited to 36T (80000lbs) on 5 axles or a 7.2T average axle load. The road wear impact of the 18-wheeler compared to the Model S is 2.5 * 7.2^4 (2.5 times the number of axles and axle load ratio raised to the 4th power), or about 6700 times that of the Model S.
It's actually slightly higher than that as 18-wheelers have 4 7.7T axles and 1 5.5 axle rather than 5 7.2T axles, the estimate is closer to 7500. Your standard 2T sedan has to drive for 7500 miles to generate the road wear a loaded 18-wheeler generates every mile.
Assuming your 2T sedan lives for 150000 miles, it's had the same road wear impact as 20 miles of a loaded 18-wheeler.
When it comes to road wear and maintenance, mileage-based pricing and taxes are trucking subsidies.