They were privately owned and it was a huge mess. When you were traveling you had to stop at gates to pay the owner of the new road that you began your journey on, assuming that you were allowed to go there in the first place as many had restrictions on where you were allowed to go, and you'd have to purchase "passports" to be allowed to travel over their land. You could be locked in a patch of land because your neighbors wouldn't sell you a "passport".
Mind you, this was several hundred years ago.

Then society found a better solution.