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"The need for massive improvements, including dedicated truck lanes and expensive tolls, could be avoided if only truck traffic were diverted off the highways and onto the railroads, chants the rising chorus of rail enthusiasts."

You've STILL got to have trucks for the distance from the rail terminal to company warehouse, and from company warehouse to final destination. Trucks are NOT gonna go away.

This is just another red-herring from the "choo-choo train" lovers.

I am a Choo Choo train lover with a Trucker son, so here goes...

To get 40 tons of freight from Coast to Coast in 4.5 days requires a pair of "team" drivers so that the truck can keep moving considering the allowable time a truck driver is allowed to drive each day. Shippers pay a premium for this.

On the other hand United Parcel Service ships their packages across the country via rail using what is called intermodal, i.e., highway trailers on flat cars or shipping containers. This is done for UPS, every day,using full trains of nothing but UPS trailer or containers, 6000 to 8000 Tons, in 6 to 7 days. It can be done by rail faster, but UPS does not want to pay the premium.

Both the barge and train numbers are off, the train figure is much too high and the barge figure is way too low.