Roads would still be built and planned by governments. But privately owned. See Highway 407 in Toronto, which was "sold" (100 year lease) to generate revenue.
Private ownership should be the product of private development in my opinion. Especially when what you'd be doing is granting a monopoly over a public asset.
We should never privatize profits deriving from public investment.
Highway 407 is a great example of what for profit highway systems look like: high prices, dynamic pricing, tons of hidden fees. Prices per mile are something like $0.80-1.00USD (for passenger cars), not including a few bucks in fees. When I traveled to Toronto for work, my bill per trip on the 407 was at around $50USD. This was in around 2014 and I imagine that prices have gone up a lot since then.
According to wikipedia, for each dollar collected by the 407, $0.21 goes to maintenance, and $0.79 to profits ($0.66 are paid out in dividends). The 407 collects $1.3 billion dollars annually with double-digit annual growth.
Private roads are economically unsustainable and serve only to leech wealth from society.
I do not agree in the least. Roads should be publicly owned and maintained. Private corporations will always seek to squeeze every last drop of money out of commuters because they are effectively a monopoly, especially on very long chunks of highways.
I didn't say I agree with that position. I think it's a terrible one, and the government that sold the 407 was incredibly misguided. But that's how it would work.
We should never privatize profits deriving from public investment.