As you say, in a private business, you are accountable to the bottom line. It may be the case that private-sector competition would lead to fantastic roads, in areas where people were willing and able to pay for them (although, given how costly roads are to build and maintain, it’s unlikely there would be very much competition - you’d end up with a monopoly/oligopoly situation in most areas).
The problem is that, if there is no customer base willing and able to pay for a particular stretch of road, a private business simply will not pay for that stretch of road. There are plenty of low population-density areas that have relatively lightly-trafficked roads. It would never benefit a company’s bottom line to build such a road. How would these roads ever get built or maintained under your approach?
You believe government is more efficient than the free market and capitalism (at least in this example of roads). And i disagree with you. See it's difficult for us humans to answer your question “How would these roads ever get built or maintained under your approach?”
no one is that smart to plan a roads market. Only the free market can do that. See the free market and capitalism created the cell phone industry for example. No single human planned that. who in 1970 could have planned and implemented that ( no one even imagined the cell phone industry then) . ditto for personal computers, smart phone industry or any number of industries( no government , no human planned that). One of the problems with socialism is that socialists and many brainwashed by the media think that a human can plan and run such things as the whole Internet or a cell phone/smart phone industry. A human can't and doesn't have to as capitalism did that by itself . But many including you (sorry you've been brainwashed by the media) believe that central planning ( ie a human directing all this) is superior to capitalism/free market. Not only can't a human plan this but we are talking about a government goon that is corrupt, unaccountable and usually driven by socialist ideology like a green agenda or social justice or wealth redistribution etc. not as the free market is driven by the bottom line as a goal or being efficient. Am I making any sense here? I am short for time and I am not a proffesional writer.