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The alternative is taxpayer funding

Taxpayers are paying whether through tolls or fuel tax or whatever.

What toll roads do (besides bottlenecks and unnecessary leavel of government bureacracy) is hide the cost. For instance there is a myth that only cost is to users. There are, however, many people who take secondary roads solely to avoid the cost of tolls thereby adding to wear and congestion on those roads, not to mention a likely unproductive use of their time.

Then there are shippers who basically have to use the toll roads but pass on their cost to their customers.

Then, there are shippers who avoid ports of entry that would otherwise make more sense due to the cost of tolls.

But as revenue devices toll roads are inefficient at collection and unnecessary hindrance to travel.

Anyway, we aren't trying to shrink government or help the economy by advocting the end of toll roads. We are trying to stop global warming AND SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!!!

Good points--tolls are certainly an imperfect method of making the user pay (though the fact that shippers pass the cost on to consumers isn't really a problem, since people might be more reluctant to ship things if the costs of wear and tear to the roads is taken into account).

Gas taxes might be a better method, provided they are actually set so that there is a resonable relationship between the revenues they raise and the money spent on roads.