Who’s the troll lurking under the bridge when it comes to toll roads in Texas these days? Is it Gov. Rick Perry, foreign road contractors — or is it all of us?

The question loomed beyond all the hot air, shaking fists and political grandstanding going on in Austin during this week’s 30-hour special session, duly called by the governor.

Texans United for Reform and Freedom mounted a small rally at the Capitol on Wednesday, railing against Perry over what it says is his persistence in pushing foreign road-building companies and tolled roads across Texas.

The group slammed Perry and any lawmakers who dared contemplate extending the authority of governments in contracting with private companies to build and operate toll roads.

Critics say legislation authorizing this would amount to “the largest tax increase in Texas history, selling Texas highways to private foreign corporations at a cost to citizens of up to 75 cents per mile in tolls, debt and taxes, all to access public roads.”

The rhetoric worked. Lawmakers failed to pass such legislation, then adjourned to race off to Fourth of July festivities.

Besides the ugly specter of xenophobia, the rally and legislators ignored the bigger question: How do we in Texas choose to pay for our roads, bridges and highways?

It’s a question most of us prefer to simply steer around.

Colossus of Roads

With Texas continuing to grow and business wanting to invest here because of the state’s pro-business, low-tax environment, there’s ironically not enough tax revenue to maintain and build roads to serve them and those of us already here.

No doubt, the governor irked lots of folks in pushing his ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor project a few years ago. Sensitive issues like eminent domain were mishandled, producing more forces allied against toll roads than the governor surely needed.

Even so, Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation sent us a letter this week signed by various city and chamber leaders, suggesting that opposition to toll roads is more speed bump than groundswell.

“Texans have clearly shown a comfort with user-fee built roads that ease congestion and toll usage as exemplified by the more than 2 million toll tags in use across the state,” the letter stated.

If legislators didn’t extend provisions allowing for privately contracted toll roads, the group said, “Texas drivers will face one of two options: massive gas tax increases to pay for these roads or maddening traffic gridlock that is unimaginable even on today’s congested roads.”

The irony: Few want to discuss the other options, even as a blue-ribbon panel estimates $387 billion in road projects will be needed in Texas through 2030.

Doubling vehicle registration fees, indexing the gas tax, ending the diversion of gas tax funds to the Texas Department of Public Safety and hiking gas taxes by 5 cents wouldn’t begin to cover the big expenses of Texas highway and road construction the next two decades.

Few of these options even got discussed by legislators this spring.

Independent Texans, a citizens political action committee, says toll roads are so despised and poorly used that a plane was able to easily land this week on Texas 130, a toll road in Williamson County.

Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation executive director Bill Noble acknowledges the point, then turns it on its head.

“Well, I can see why the pilot didn’t want to land on Interstate 35,” he told me. “Texas 130 is a joy to drive.”

The beauty of toll roads is that, by and large, they’re for those willing to pay for them. It’s a personal choice. It also means more room to maneuver for those of us who prefer publicly funded roads, congested though they may be.

Plus, this all could some day have the effect of freeing up more state money for individual road projects closer to home, where toll roads aren’t as economically viable with the possible exception of additional lanes for busy Interstate 35.

That likelihood would leave most trolls and tolls in the big cities. And we could go and visit them whenever we wished.