Really? News to me, but completely consistent with toll-road interests. Just look at a map of Pennsylvania, Ohio, northern Indiana. See any alternatives to the big turnpike? The Jersey Turnpike? Nah. Here's a little map game you can play for a few minutes: get a road atlas and try to find a way to get to Atlantic City or New York City from just about anywhere, without paying some nice fat tolls adding up to about what you'd pay for an evening at the New York Met. Go ahead, have a look.
No matter how crowded and congested these routes get (exception: Indiana, on the western part of the Indiana Turnpike, which is parallelled by an Interstate), it's going to be tough to get any traffic relief for the public with that 1000-pound gorilla of a vested-interest group sitting on the state DoTs' and legislatures' heads.
The "civil urban living" alternative that some of these "new urbanism" morons keep yapping about (which they won't be living in; they'll be retired to Arquitectonica A-frames tucked under a bunch of ponderosa pines in a national forest somewhere, if they have their way) involves train commuting for the hoi polloi who perversely insist on living in suburbs as opposed to downtown tenements barracks warrens hives rat-infested cement towers upscale midrise apartments, and a trip back to the 19th century, so that the EZ-Tag commuting elite -- which of course will include the intelligentsia -- can have the less-crowded Lexus lanes and Bimmerways to themselves. Special roadways and lanes like the Moscow bosses used to have, that Hedrick Smith wrote about in The Russians, that were reserved for official limos with KGB drivers screaming through downtown at 80 mph. Now that is a "civil urban community" for you!
The Florida public, with the Sunshine Turnpike going through the middle of the state and I-75/"Alligator Alley" tolled across the Everglades east-west, will play hell trying to get any more good access routes into South Florida -- I-95 is it. Plus, Lakeland/Winter Haven and greater Orlando are pretty much hemmed in by toll roads, so good luck getting any more commuter capacity built. Floridians already have a big toll-road political "audience" sitting on their faces. They're kinda screwed.
Did the newspapers ever pry loose that "secret contract" that Gov. Rick Perry executed with Cintra-Zachry? The Houston Chronicle was in court trying to get it, last I heard. First useful thing the Stumpicle will have done in a while, if they succeed, and partial expiation of all that straight liberal bilge they're putting on their editorial page the last few years.
Meanwhile the state of Texas pokes it's nose in all kinds of business and the Texas taxpayers foot the bill for expanded government. But the same state abdicates a prime and historic responsibility to build and maintain roads. It's going to hire some damn foreigners to do it. I never heard such ass backwards nonsense!