The multibillion-dollar project to build toll lanes along I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties is unlikely to be financially feasible as proposed by the private consortium Georgia Transportation Partners, and it should be dropped, the state Department of Transportation's financial adviser told the DOT board Wednesday.

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The adviser, Aaron Barman of Royal Bank of Canada, said all proposals currently under consideration for private investment in public toll roads — including I-75, which is already under a development contract, and Ga. 400, I-285 and I-20 — should be suspended.

He said there are ways the roads might work as toll roads, but not as currently proposed. Instead, he said, the DOT should first make decisions on issues such as how high tolls should be and whether trucks should be in mandatory toll lanes.

Transportation officials also should do more detailed traffic analyses before deciding what sort of public-private transportation system to put out to bid and how to do it. The decision is ultimately the DOT board's.

The I-75/I-575 project proposed adding two truck-only toll lanes along I-75 and adding so-called "Lexus lanes" for drivers who choose to pay to get out of congestion along both I-75 and I-575.

Very little private investment was included in the plan, but hundreds of millions of dollars would be invested by the state.

The recommendations on toll roads seemed in line with the DOT board's growing dissatisfaction with patchwork toll road planning, depending on private companies to suggest what part of the system to build rather than the DOT itself planning a comprehensive system.

Commissioner Gena Abraham said RBC's recommendations resulted from her request to re-evaluate the state's public-private toll road program. She said that while the recommendations were RBC's alone, she would "listen very strongly" to its findings. First, though, she and board members said they intended to sit down with the companies that had made the toll road proposals to hear their side.

"Maybe we missed something or maybe RBC missed something," Abraham said. She added that rejecting those proposals did not mean cutting those corridors from road expansion, it just could be done differently.

Representatives from companies that had bid on two of the projects who were present at the meeting declined to comment.

Bechtel Infrastructure joined with other companies to propose the project on I-75 and I-575 at $1.8 billion, but the state added more aspects to the project and inflation drove up construction and land costs, bringing the price to $4 billion.

In addition, trucking groups said they would sue if they were forced to use the toll lanes. But the state conceded that mandatory truck tolls were probably the only way to pay for the project.

Abraham said the DOT could get out of the $38.5 million development contract with Bechtel and its partners, after paying for work that already has been done, which could amount to $5 million to $7 million.

Each of the consortia that pitched projects under the toll program easily may have spent $1 million each on their proposals, but Abraham said it was possible the state could pay them stipends.