This is the first I've heard of it.
Ok, so I'm assuming that this was the reason. The old highway, 4 lane undivided, was closed completely sometime before I started commuting on the 91.
Whatever the reason was that they closed it, it was far easier for them to allow building toll lanes that returned taxes than to reopen the old road. It was very telling that of all the "free"ways in California, the ones that got toll lanes were the ones that had natural choke points with no alternatives. I understand they've sold the toll lanes back to the government now, but it was an outrage to me that a private company was allowed to build in the center median of a public road in the first place.
There are a few things that government is the right entity to do a particular job. Providing for the national defense, maintaining a stable currency, and providing good navigable roadways and waterways are a few of them. If the government is screwing up that job, then we should pressure them to fix it, not turn it over to a ragtag bunch of private companies with even less accountability than government is today.
Once a private company has a virtual monopoly on travel between two points, there's even less incentive for them to provide good service than government. And that's pretty bad now.