In my humble opinion, I believe that one of the more interesting ways to create the ideal conditions for a railroad that never really existed is to rewrite the historical facts to conform to the story behind the railroad. Last night it dawned on me that I could rewrite state and national laws to create a modern-day railroad, based in a real location, and operating rights-of-way that have been abandoned for decades, by creating conditions that make the railroad an ideal solution to a major problem.
I apologize in advance to any truckers who may be offended by this scenario. I needed a way to move as many carloads out of the area served by the railroad as possible without truck competition, while generating as much operating interest as possible.
The scenario is as follows:
-Low weight limit on roads for trucks
-High state taxes on semi-truck fleet operations
-Taxes include road-usage tax for commercial vehicles:
-County by county basis
-Tend to be higher in rural counties
-Some agricultural equipment exempt
-Typically only that equipment used for transportation to and from the nearest co-op location is exempted
-Taxes are based on weight, mileage, routes and fuel consumption of each vehicle
The result has been roads in far better shape than ever before, with only minimal maintenance needed, which balances the lack of funding for county road commissions in recent years. There is a trade-off though, in that recreational and personal automotive use is not subject to the same tax rate as those of commercial vehicles, and personal automotive use is at least as popular, if not more so, than it has been historically. For this reason passenger rail transportation, outside of certain state-supported corridors, is almost non-existent.
Charles W.
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