New 'Toll Lanes,' Not More Toll Roads, for Metro Atlanta

ATLANTA, Ga. -- The Georgia Department of Transportation is moving ahead quickly with plans to expand interstate highways across Metro Atlanta. The new lanes would be toll lanes, and they would be constructed next to existing interstate lanes.

Private companies would pay to build the toll lanes, since the DOT says the state cannot afford to expand interstate capacity without private-sector financing.

The private companies would make their money back from a portion of the tolls. DOT would set the toll amounts.

There would be no toll booths. Motorists would use electronic billing devices similar to Cruise Cards that would automatically bill them whenever they enter a toll lane from the existing "taxpayer funded" lanes.

The DOT has a priority list of where it wants the first, public-private toll lanes to be built, including next to the I-75 / I-575 corridor, and next to the top end of I-285, and alongside a portion of Georgia 400 outside the perimeter, in Fulton and Forsyth Counties.

Click here to see more information about the Public Private Partnership, called P3.

Watch the video for this story to see a brief clip of toll lanes in another state that were built next to crowded, "free" taxpayer-funded lanes.

One beleaguered, over-taxed, stuck-in-traffic-everyday mechanic in Metro Atlanta, David Day, cannot understand why the Georgia DOT wants everyone to pay tolls to use the new lanes.

"I think we pay enough in taxes to where we shouldn't have to pay again to drive on the streets," Day said.

But David Spear of Georgia DOT emphasized that private companies will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to build the toll lanes next to the interstates, and he said drivers will never pay tolls to use the existing, taxpayer-funded lanes of the interstates.

"What we're talking about is providing additional infrastructure. New lanes that they [drivers] would have access to," Spear said.

The existing free lanes -- the taxpayer-paid-for lanes -- will, Spear said again, remain free.

"It will be more than 50 cents, in all likelihood" to use the toll lanes, Spear said, "depending on the time of day and the traffic loads." For example, a driver who uses the toll lanes to escape the rush hour traffic that's clogging the adjacent "free" interstates will pay more than a driver who uses the toll lanes in the middle of the night when the interstates are clear.

"This will totally be a driver's option" to use the toll lanes or the "free" lanes, Spear said. "If they want to drive onto a managed lane and pay a variable toll, then that will be their option. If they choose not to, then that's certainly their option."

Spear said if the state were to build the additional lanes that Metro Atlanta needs, using traditional sources of taxpayer revenue, there would be no tolls on the new lanes. But, he said, it would be "decades and decades" before the state had enough money.

Allowing the private sector to use its own cash right away, in exchange for the tolls, gets the additional lanes open for commuters, Spear said, beginning by around 2014 or 2015.

So, the latest schedule is to open the first public-private toll lanes next to I-75 / I-575 in about five years.

The state will own the lanes, even though private companies are putting up the money to build them.