Undertanding Toll-Roads

I have had a hard time understanding the toll-road issue for quite a while. So here's the skinny as well as I know it:

Toll-roads come in generally two categories, created from scratch and created from a previous road. The created from scratch type of road is on the surface a semi-good idea. If you are going to have a road instead of investing in better means of transportation, a road that "pays for itself" seems to be the way to go. In a perfect world, the road would be tolled until the cost of the construction was paid off and then it would revert to a regular road. Unfortunately, this is not the case. These roads continue to be tolled and the money goes who-knows-where. It ends up being a double taxation type thing. We are taxed to maintain all the roads and then taxed again to drive on this road. Let's say you live in Round Rock and drive to JJ Pickle on Burnet Road 5 days a week, you will pay roughly $50 per month in tolls. For someone in college, or anyone realy, that's not chump change.

The big problem, though, is that people believe that the toll road is a solution. It is not. Just look at Houston. In 10 years we will have just as much conjestion on the tolls as we have right now without them. Think of it like this: Lets say you have 5 people sitting around an empty glass and each one has a coffee stirrer. The task is to fill up the glass with water by using the little straws. (This is a gross idea but it's all I have) So the five people sit there and blow the water through the straw and it is slow going. So someone gives them more tiny little straws. It works a bit better with more straws but a 6th and 7th person come into this circle of water spitters and they join in. Pretty soon you are back where you started. Trying to fill up a glass with too few resources. Now what if we gave those same people a couple of big fat MickyD's straws. We would be able to put a lot more water in the glass in a shorter amount of time. (The little straws are roads and toll roads, the glass is Austin, the people are the surrounding areas, the big straws are mass transit, and the spit-water is us.) Just adding more little strws will not do it in the long run. If you know better, let me know.