Most mornings and evenings, Monday through Friday, you can find me driving Ronald Reagan Parkway. Living in Snellville and working off Jimmy Carter Boulevard, I've found it the best route for my commute.

I'm not alone, of course. At last check, the parkway was traveled by 27,000 to 45,000 vehicles a day, depending on the location. It can get pretty crowded —- even backed up at times, like Monday morning when one lane was closed for median maintenance.

Ronald Reagan Parkway doesn't take me all the way to my office. I follow it to its end at Pleasant Hill Road (or sometimes get off at Lawrenceville Highway) and then zig-zag my way to work.

So, news that the county is interested in finding a private contractor who would extend the road to I-85 caught my attention. The idea is that the contractor would take on the project and then charge tolls on the new section to cover expenses and provide a profit.

Contractors have until Aug. 11 to submit proposals.

When Ronald Reagan Parkway was built, it was meant to fill the need for a cross-county connector. Gwinnett County had plenty of corridors that radiated from the Perimeter out, but few multi-lane roads crossing those corridors.

Ronald Reagan Parkway also was an important route to ease travel from Snellville to the Gwinnett Place mall area.

The road was originally planned to extend from Snellville to I-85. It didn't make it that far, delivering its traffic to Pleasant Hill instead.

Even without that last leg, the project cost about $44 million. It opened 14 years ago.

The project was a tough one. It ran into opposition all along the way. There were owners of homes in the path who opposed the route, environmentalists concerned about potential damage to wetlands and rare plants, and others concerned about a historic home and an old quartz quarry used by Native Americans to make arrowheads.

The county dug up 200 orchid lady-slippers and donated them to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Plans were altered to protect wetlands, and historical artifacts were rescued, documented and donated.

Although those concerns were resolved, there was additional controversy when a newly elected county commissioner served as the real estate agent for a landowner along one proposed path for the last stretch to I-85.

Eventually, the plans for the last leg were set aside and have never been picked back up. Transportation priorities changed. And the last stretch would have cost about $81 million about 12 years ago. The price would be even more now.

Thus the interest in a public-private partnership, one of the first —- if not the first —- proposed by a county in Georgia.

Will demand support it?

I don't know.

While I think the road should connect with I-85, I'm not sure if I would be willing to pay a toll for the extra length to the interstate.

It would depend on how much time and traffic the extension would shave from my commute. How much the toll would cost. How backed up I-85 would be once I got there.

Lots of questions.

I'll be interested in hearing the answers.

What do you think about a public-private partnership to extend Ronald Reagan Parkway? Would you be willing to pay a toll for the last leg of the road?

> Susan Gast's blog appears on ajc.com's Gwinnett Snellville page: www.ajc.com/yoursnellville.