I've mentioned the Australian model a few times on here.
Brisbane was a lot like Calgary in the sense that it was a nice, small(ish) city way back in the early 90's. Since then it has exploded in growth as the major business center for Australia, where a lot of jobs are created, people are moving, etc etc and now their infrastructure is a mess with gigantic traffic problems.
The city will tender out the cost to build a new road/bridge, and in that cost is a toll charge the company can collect for (x) period of time to help recover some of their cost. After that period is over, the city takes it over.
No idea how maintenance is involved.
It seems to be a successful model, because every time I'm over there (yearly) there is more infrastructure work going on to relieve bottlenecks. There are toll roads all over the place, but all you need is a transmitter on your dash connected to a credit card that gets charged every time you pass a station. You don't even slow down.
Now, I just moved to Okotoks and work on the far SE outskirt of the city so I don't really care either way anymore, but when I was living DT commuting across Glenmore/Deerfoot every day I would be all over some type of toll road to make my commute quicker.
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