The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aiding and Abetting Road Socialism 383
all bets are off. For, while one of these super trucks can carry two
or even three container loads of product, a train can transport as
many as 156 boxcars. 13 Then, there is the matter of speed. Maximum
legal velocity on most highways is seventy miles per hour.
Trains, in very sharp contrast, are capable of multiples of that
speed. 14
It is not my place to give economic advice to the central planning
authorities. 15 We can safely leave such “analysis” to Poole
13 “CN boxcars jump tracks . . . FORT LAWRENCE—No one was injured
when 10 empty boxcars belonging to a 156-car freight train derailed here
late Friday night, blocking the main rail line.” www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2004/
05/23/fNovaScotia247.raw.html.
14Some commentators (re: the German Inter City Express) speak of average
speeds of 125 miles per hour, and top speeds of 174 (www.okeating.com/hsr/ice.htm);
others, re: the Japanese Shinkansen Bullet Train
www.o-keating.com/hsr/bullet.htm) mention an average speed of 164
mph.
15The enormity of the deviation between calling for the government to
cease and desist from killing people on the roads, and the sort of specific
advice given to them from Reason may be seen in the detailed plans created
by the latter for the former. Here is where Poole thinks his truckway policies
can best be introduced: I-80 across Iowa and Illinois, linking current
LCV operations in the West with those on the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes;
I-90 from Cleveland to the New York state line, linking LCV operations on
the Ohio Turnpike and New York Thruway; I-15 in California, from the
logistics center in Barstow to the Nevada line (where LCVs now operate); I-
75 from Detroit to Toledo, a spur off the Ohio Turnpike; I-75 from Toledo
south to Florida, connecting both to Tampa and to the Florida Turnpike
(where long doubles are legal); I-5 the length of California’s Central Valley;
I-94 from Chicago to the Twin Cities; I-65 from Gary, Indiana (on the Indiana
Turnpike) to Nashville; I-81 from Knoxville, Tennessee to Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, both major logistics centers; I-76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
which links directly to the LCV-friendly Ohio Turnpike. Nor is Poole satisfied,
even, with this level of detail. He continues:
Our study also contains specific recommendations for legislative
provisions needed to enable pilot toll truckways to exist, most
importantly the legalization of LCV operations on such truckways
in states currently subject to the LCV freeze, the ability to