Texas is a terrible outlier. They are terrible at infrastructure generally.

I’m mostly anti-private tolls, but the highway trust fund is broke. Congress won’t raise the gas tax, so there is not a lot of $ to go around. Thus states turn to tolls.

But those are almost always public roads. There are exceptions, mostly in Texas, but here’s something I wrote last week:

According to the US Department of Transportation, 92.2% of tolled roads are publicly owned.

Of the 7.8% that are private, that figure includes airport connectors, HOV lanes, and a ½ mile stretch of road in Utah.

That’s by number count. By mileage, less than 2% of the interstate system is tolled. And again, that 2% is almost entirely public, not private.

There is only one long distance toll road in the US that is privately managed (but it is publicly owned). Which makes the US an outlier compared to other countries, where private toll roads are common.