Last month we drew readers attention to a paper from the sensible environmental think tank "Resources For the Future) in which it was suggested that when all costs, including environmental ones, were taken into account the petrol tax paid by road users in the UK was about twice what it should be. In contrast drivers in the US were paying only about half the true cost of their driving because their tax was too low.

Click here if you missed it http://www.rff.org/issue_briefs/2001.htm

This month we reprint a paper from the UK Railway Development Society, which looks at the matter another way, by comparing the calculated true costs of motoring and of rail. Although the figures are from 1996 the relative figures have probably not changed dramatically. The conclusion is that compared with rail users, road drivers were receiving a subsidy from the taxpayer of about £68 billion annually.

Read the paper here.

Have your say below.   After taking into account all the environmental and other costs and benefits of road usage, are drivers paying too much or too little?   Don't forget to vote on both UK and US petrol tax.   In the UK we pay about 50p per litre.  In the US the average is about 6p per litre.