Strife over I-85 toll project

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By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The project on I-85 in Gwinnett County to initiate metro Atlanta’s future network of HOV toll lanes is so beset with discord that the state Department of Transportation’s board has yanked it from next month’s bidding list, delaying the project at least a month.

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Ben Gray, brgay@ajc.com

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At the board’s monthly meeting Thursday, board members assailed the fact, first reported in March in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that the I-85 toll sensors would not work on Ga. 400 Cruise Card lanes, and vice versa. They raised concerns about the structure of the toll lanes, which would have no concrete barrier between the toll lane and regular lanes, and where toll drivers would have to cross all lanes to exit the interstate.

But the issue that brought the project to a temporary halt was a power-sharing agreement between the DOT and the State Road and Tollway Authority that would lay out roles like setting the toll rates and maintaining the road, and which remains unsigned even as construction looms.

To kudos from DOT Chairman Bill Kuhlke and Vice Chairman Rudy Bowen, board member Dana Lemon asked why such an agreement wasn't signed long ago, and she said the project should not be bid until it is.

DOT's chief engineer, Gerald Ross, said instead of putting the project out to bid next month he would return to the board with a signed agreement and a presentation on tolling technology compatibility. He said the DOT had first tried to form such an agreement years ago.

SRTA spokeswoman Cherie Gibson said it was the DOT that wanted the agreement, it was a recent request, and "we were led to believe it was not a requirement for [bidding]." The SRTA sent a draft to the DOT on May 7 and was ready to negotiate and sign a final one, she said. DOT spokeswoman Karlene Barron said DOT staff were "confident" one would be signed within the month.

At the board meeting, two members questioned the project entirely. “If this is as bad as what we’re hearing around this table today, why are we participating?” board member Sam Wellborn asked. Board member David Doss said it seems so ill-conceived that Georgia should send the $110 million federal grant that's helping pay for the project back to Washington.

Doss criticized the project’s layout but lamented that “I guess the ship’s already sailed on that.”

“The ship has not sailed!” Lemon declared.

Kuhlke, the chairman, touched on the elephant in the room: politics.

The project is championed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, who has feuded with Doss and the board, and by the SRTA, which is chaired by Perdue and headed by Gena Evans. Evans was commissioner of the DOT before the DOT board fired her last year.

Kuhlke didn't mention Evans, but he quoted her. “It seems to be a couple years ago ... the statement was made that DOT was going to be the quarterback," Kuhlke said. "... So I think, Gerald, what you hear around the table on this particular issue is, let’s become the quarterback. And when we get ready come back to us. I mean I know a lot of work’s been done on it, but it seems to me like we got a lot of fingers in the dish.”

The project would put electronic tolls on I-85's HOV lane in Gwinnett from about the Perimeter to Old Peachtree Road. The toll amount would rise and fall with congestion in the main lanes. The idea is not to make money but to guarantee, for those who can afford it, one place on the highway where traffic is mobile. Single drivers and two-person car pools would have to pay, but large car pools and buses could drive free.

Ross tried to allay the board's concerns, and emphasized the federal grant was to try something new. It "was a demonstration project to see if it works,” Ross said. “We haven’t actually said whether or not we’re guaranteeing it’s going to work. I don’t know that right now.”

The question of competing toll systems may be moot, since the I-85 project is supposed to be finished next summer, about the time the bonds that paid to build Ga. 400 are paid off and the tolls can come down. Evans, the SRTA director, has said she chose the type of toll transponder because it was dramatically cheaper.