Investor financing of toll roads is part of a much broader movement worldwide for governments to move away from owning and managing businesses. For about 30 years, governments have been divesting themselves of banks, insurance companies, telephone services, railways, electricity, oil, steel plants, ship building, airlines, automobile manufacture, airports, ports and many other services.
Americans are not as aware of this privatization trend because, in America, very few of these industries were government owned to begin with. Without as much to privatize, privatization was not a big deal.
However, the Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans have all seen major and sustained privatization drives over several decades. In Europe, even the institutions of the European Community are firmly directed towards privatizing state business enterprises like toll roads.
Of course, the collapse of communism is part of the trend, as well. In economic and Marxist terms, communism was state ownership of the means of production. This led to state-owned farms, state-owned factories, state-owned stores and state-owned utilities. Neither communism nor socialism worked because they could not harness the power of the market to incentivize people to work cooperatively. Neither resources nor capital could be allocated properly, which led to low productivity and low standards of living. Talent was frustrated.
Socialism was based on a false assumption that central planners could foresee the future, and there was a failure to understand the creative power of markets to serve consumers, generate the productivity needed to pay good wages, handle risk and reward good judgment.