County: Our toll roads aren't for sale

If you've been spending the past few months dreaming of owning your very own toll road, well, get ready to be disappointed — or at least to look somewhere else. Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously today not to sell or lease the county roll road system to a private company, opting instead to keep running it and raking in about $373 million in annual revenue. (Sure, $373 million a year sounds like a lot, but analysts said the county could have gotten as much as $13 billion by leasing the system or $20 billion by selling it. Now that's some serious cash — and it's way more than preliminary studies suggested.)

Selling or leasing the system would have resulted in a financial windfall for the county, but one consulting group hired to look at the system, Citigroup and Siebert Brandford Shank & Co., recommended the county keep the system and study how to best leverage its revenue for future expansion. We suppose that's what they plan to do.

The idea of selling toll road systems isn't new: Tollways in Toronto and Chicago are already being operated by private companies, and a Spanish toll road company is negotiating to develop part of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor.