I don’t know if you recall, but when these toll road stories first started getting posted, I was a supporter, in principle, of new toll roads. Ric Williamson and his puppet Rick Perry have managed to change my mind.
If the two of them keep working hard enough on the project, they may be able to deliver the governor’s office to the democrats.
Government should be strictly limited. But... Good "free" roads are one thing best done by government. Private commercial roads cannot be controlled by competition like other enterprises. Should two roads between two destinations be built, they would compete to the lowest dollar until one goes bankrupt and is bought out by the other, and any thus competition ends.
Roads are the best economic stimulant you can have. If governments want tax money, *any* tax money, not just gas taxes, then they have to build roads.
To ensure that the roads are maintained well, the recourse is to elect politicians that will do it. You can't vote the CEO of a private toll company out of his job, and as described above toll roads are natural monopolies that competition cannot control. Government roads are the only answer. The current fiasco in Texas is pretty obviously corruption of public officials that want to get rid of the responsibility of maintaining roads, while getting the tax money and political support from corporations wishing to buy themselves into the public infrastructure business.
Texas politicians are trying to get short term gain at the price of long term pain for Texas drivers.
Everyone I have talked to regrets voting for Perry. Any anti-toll road candidate would have been better.