I certainly know what it is.
It's when some entity - government, private company, or private foreign company (as we now do in Texas) - with monopoly protection decides how to price a toll road for maximum revenue - and to hell with the public.
This entity decides whether it makes more sense to jack up the cost of driving (i.e., increase tolls to extreme levels) - thereby lessening congestion for the same amount of capacity. Or whether to add simply add capacity, and thus not be able to increase prices. So far, every decision that I've seen on SH-91 in California has been the first of the two options - for obvious reasons, I may add.
This system may turn you on, but I don't have pockets as deep as you evidently do, and therefore I prefer to pay a gas tax that averages (for my 25 MPG vehicles) about 2 cents per mile (state and federal combined), and I would support paying up to another 2 cents per mile (i.e., another 50 cents per gallon) in order to have sufficient freeway capacity, so that EVERYBODY that needs to can afford to drive.
The 12.5 cents per mile now charged for the old toll roads in the Houston area, the 20 to 30 cents per mile now charged for toll roads (both privately and publicly operated) in Denver and Toronto, and the up-to 85 cents per mile being charged on SH-91 ( 10 miles -
http://www.91expresslanes.com/tollschedules.asp ) are what bothers me - but I guess not everyone, particularly when there is an embattled Republican governor up for re-election.