Ga. toll lanes ready to go to bid

A plan for Georgia’s first public-private toll road project is set to go out for bid, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed have not decided when it will happen.

The path to putting the project out for bid was cleared recently when Georgia won a TIFIA loan from the federal government for part of the $1 billion project. Even with the federal loan and private funding, Georgia taxpayers probably will still have to pay about a third of the cost of the project.

The project to add one or two reversible toll lanes along I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties would be the biggest in the state’s history. Tolls on the new lanes would be adjusted to maintain free-flowing traffic conditions at all times.

As currently conceived, the private partner would finance the project, operate the toll lanes and recover its investment by collecting tolls over a period of decades.