[pp.int.general] Big Brother in NL?

[Reinier Bakels]

>    You are right. I heard the same. Effectively, vans pay much too little. 
> This
>    industry (especially in NL!) is effectively subsidised by low taxes. A
>    proper price will kill a branch of endeavour. Which logically perhaps 
> should
>    not have existed at all. But politicians don't do that. Another concern 
> is
>    that there is not really an alternative (I have been told). Even in 
> western
>    Europe with its dense railway network. And the abondance of waterways. 
> Vans
>    deliver door to door all over Europe in a relatively short timeframe.
>
> The cost of road repairs is not really that big.  The biggest harm done
> by trucks is the CO2 emission.  We need to start raising their taxes
> so that, over the next 5 to 10 years, the economy will restructure
> to use such transport less, and use trains for freight more.
>
I recall another argument was that if all traffic shifts from vans to trains 
overnight, the railway network will be totally insufficient. Actually our 
government somehow anticipated this situation by bulding a new freight 
railway from the Rotterdam harbour in the very west of the coutry, to the 
eastern border. It is a major scantal. It is still hardly used, and it is 
estimated never to be profitable. Google Betuwelijn.
reinier