I don't know how much it factors in, but highways has a tradition of being payed by the government as a seperate item, while tracks has a tradition of being payed partly by the government ad partly by passengers as a bundled item together with traffic. I once read a Swedish text from the 70ies arguing that if the price structure was pushing goods from rail to roads because the (then national) rail company had to cover the costs of the tracks too, while the lorry companies only paid for the trucks and gas.

So to make the comparision equivalent, the onwer of the tracks shoould be the government and must take the full costs of maintaining the system, that is it should charge only congestion fees. In parctise I suspect this means a much bigger rail budget.

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