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Here in Texas they are building tollroads, and at first I thought it was great, because I-35 is clogged with NAFTA traffic, 18-wheelers, etc. under some poor conditions running through the San Antonio-Austin corridor.

The problem is...apparently the tollroads/tollroad companies/authority have "no-compete" clauses, whereas highways that could potentially take away tollroad drivers cannot expand. I'm still poking around to find info, but somebody was telling me about it and I found it a bit disturbing.

This happened in Orange County, CA. The state gave the property in the middle of the 91 Fwy to a private company. They built the toll road, maintained it, and collected the tolls. It turns out that a state bureaucrat signed an agreement not to make any improvements to the freeway in the 11 mile section that had the toll road down the middle.

This section of the 91 Fwy is one of the worst roads in CA, but now, neither the state nor Orange County could make the road flow better. Then the private toll company claimed they were losing money which although possible would require a moron to accomplish.

Eventually, the Orange County Transportation Agency purchased the road. They have run it for about a year. The first thing they did was to fund a lane addition which just opened and has improved westbound traffic significantly. They have other improvements on the drawing board. They also made the toll road free during most hours to vehicles carrying 3 or more people. Hard to believe that a public agency is more effective than a private one.

By the way, Orange County has been the test case for privately owned toll roads in CA. It has been a failure. In addtion to the 91 toll road, there were three other brand new toll roads build. They are run by a public agency. The traffic has been way below the estimates made when the roads were being planned. The tolls are not sufficient to meet payments on the bonds sold to build the roads. So far, it has not been a problem because the debt servicing in the early years of operation was planned to be low. This experience has effectively killed any plans for private/public toll roads elsewhere in CA.