Once again, the state is preparing to put the I-75/I-575 toll project out to bid, in June.
The project would build optional toll lanes along I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties, from the Perimeter to Hickory Grove Road and to Sixes Road. The cost approaches $1 billion, to be funded largely by gas taxes paid by all Georgia drivers -- whether or not they drive the toll lanes -- and by tolls.
As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in March, the revised project will no longer be a public-private partnership as envisioned by the state Legislature. Companies will not finance the road to lease it from the state and be paid back by toll revenue over the years. Instead, much like any state road project, the state will hire private companies to create it and pay them back for their work afterward.
Then the state must pay to maintain and operate the road. That means once the road is operating, the state will control the road. If the toll fee is too high, the state can lower it. But if toll revenue isn’t enough, that’s the state’s problem, too.
There is a difference with this project, though, which is the most expensive transportation project in state history. First, the designers and builders will work as a team, hoping to save time and money. Second, the team also will help arrange or provide initial financing. Such "design-build-finance" models are generally used to fill a short-term gap in financing projects, and give states more flexibility, Sia Kusha, vice president of the engineering firm HNTB, said in an interview this spring. According to a statement, the state expects the bidders to loan the state 10 to 20 percent of the project cost.
With design-build-finance, the contractors don't generally provide upfront the big bucks required to finance the project over the long term. In Georgia's case, the state is ready to do that with $500 million in gas taxes. The rest of the $950 million or so could come from loans paid back by toll money.
On the flip side, Kusha said, no matter where the state borrows its project money, the state has to pay for that service. With design-build-finance, when the state pays for the work the contractors have completed, "the state, in terms of their payback, will have to pay back the money the contractor brings to the table and then some," he said.
Similar arrangements have helped finance projects in Florida.
This is at least the third time the state has put the I-75/I-575 project out to bid. In 2005, it signed a contract for initial work, but eventually broke off that arrangement. It revised the project and put it out to bid as a public-private project last year, but canceled that bidding.
The state now expects to start design work next year and open it to traffic by 2018.
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