Driving on I5 from Seattle to Portland is now a long line of semis, one after the other. Trucks, even loaded to the legal limit, cause 9,000 times as much fatigue damage to the road as a car (fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight).

It's inefficient and environmentally absurd to use trucks that way. Railroad tracks parallel I5. The solution is to pick the container off the semi, put it on a railcar, do the intercity haul on the rails (which are made for heavy loads) with minimal fuel and manpower costs, pick it up and put it on a truck to do the last mile in the destination city.

So why isn't this done now? Highways are subsidized by cars (fuel taxes), and railroads are taxed. The incentives are backwards.

What I'd do is significantly raise the weight taxes on trucks on the interstates, and use that money to subsidize the rail right-of-way.