Another transportation blog I recently discovered, Cap’n Transit, has started an interesting series of articles on “moving things,” ie. freight hauling. You should read these little snippets. I especially appreciate some of the information and data he links to in these articles.

One quote caught my attention:

Reducing highway and fuel subsidies is one way to make the cost of trucking more apparent.

This is touching on a solution to one of our problems, the True Costs are Hidden. Fuel taxes (with generous help from the general federal budget) fund our highway infrastructure and therefore hide some of the costs associated with shipping freight or transporting people by car.

We need to reduce the subsidies to the highways and at the same time require shipping companies (and motorists perhaps) to directly fund the infrastructure they are using. This will put the different modes of “moving things” on more equal footing.