GDOT fast-forwards Ga. 400/I-285 project

• Georgia projects imperiled if federal transportation funds run dry http://www.myajc.com/news/news/transportation/georgia-projects-imperiled-if-federal-transportati/nfryn/

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/transportation/georgia-projects-imperiled-if-federal-transportati/nfryn/

Bainbridge, Ga. — It looks like drivers on one of the state’s most congested highway interchanges — Ga. 400 and I-285 —will get relief several years sooner than expected.

The State Transportation Board voted Thursday to free up $130 million of previously authorized bonds and permit the use of $81.5 million in accrued state motor fuel funds to retool the interchange. That’s the biggest chunk of money set aside for the $950 million overhaul to date.

The Ga. 400/I-285 interchange has been labeled the state’s highest priority road project by both the Georgia Department of Transportation and the governor’s office. It carries about 365,000 vehicles a day, according to GDOT.

Thursday’s vote could allow construction on the interchange to leapfrog forward by two years, from 2018 to 2016, and proceed at much faster pace. The revamped interchange could open to traffic by 2019 — more than a decade earlier than previously projected — GDOT officials said.

There’s just one possible hangup: If the funding plan changes anything in the region’s transportation budget, it will require approval by the Atlanta Regional Commission. ARC leaders said Thursday they were unaware of GDOT’s revised timetable.

Gov. Nathan Deal said in an interview Thursday that the project also must overcome environmental hurdles and engineering studies that aren’t likely to be completed until next year. But the governor, whose re-election bid hinges on next Tuesday’s GOP primary, he said he’s “absolutely” confident that construction can begin soon after.

“As we see offices of other companies locate here in this area, the use of this corridor is going to continue to grow,” Deal said at the groundbreaking of a State Farm complex a few miles from the notorious interchange. “It’s an issue we pay attention to and we need to move as expeditiously as possible. And we thought this was an opportunity to do so.”

The General Assembly approved the $130 million bond sales in votes in 2010 and 2011. GDOT had not yet moved to sell the bonds because the department was trying to avoid taking on more debt, GDOT Commissioner Keith Golden said. The bond sales will have to be repaid over 20 years with motor fuel taxes.

In addition to hastening the Ga. 400/I-285 work, the money is needed now to fund about 70 summer transportation projects that were in peril because of a federal funding crisis, Golden said.

That crisis stems from the looming insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for a majority of states’ bridge, road and transit projects.

Trust fund revenue has been steadily declining because it is backed by an 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax that has not been increased since 1993. In the interim, cars have become more fuel-efficient, and Americans have spent less on gas. The fund is expected to go into the red by August if Congress doesn’t act to replenish it.

“This funding plan will provide a stop gap measure that will allow us to continue working on Georgia’s transportation priorities as we wait on Washington to reauthorize the federal transportation bill,” Deal said Thursday in a press release.

GDOT board member Dan Moody of Johns Creek cast the lone dissenting vote, saying afterward that he thought the board should give Congress a little more time to act before reaching into its own pockets.

“This is all the money we have left, and we are getting ready to spend it,” Moody said. “I don’t know of any other funding source. And I’m not as optimistic as the rest of the board that we are going to come up with a long-term funding solution.”

To complete the I-285/Ga. 400 interchange, GDOT will seek a public-private partnership that allows the department to spread payments out over several years.

Yvonne Williams, president of the Perimeter Community Improvement District, said the project is hugely important for the region.

“The interchange is at the center of the metro Atlanta region, and it will help connect traffic from North Fulton to Cumberland to Doraville,” said Williams, whose self-taxing business districts pledged $10.5 million toward the project last year. “That interchange can be the anchor for how we start building transportation corridor improvements across the top end of 285.”

The vote on the bond deal came as something of a surprise. It was held as the State Transportation Board gathered at one of its twice yearly outside-Atlanta meetings, this one in far south Georgia.

Golden said GDOT has been working with the governor’s office for several months on a possible solution to the funding impasse. He said the bond proposal was hammered out within the last few days and brought to a vote in order to keep summer projects from stalling.

The decision to go into more debt is not without controversy.

In a discussion last week with the editorial board of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Golden said debt service “continues to be the big noose around our neck.” GDOT is saddled with roughly $400 million in debt payments every year for projects it sought to fast-forward in the last decade.

Former Dalton Mayor David Pennington, who is challenging the governor in Tuesday’s primary, questioned Deal’s “sense of urgency” in releasing the news shortly before the big vote. And Neill Herring, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said Thursday’s decision smacks of politics.

“This is all about Deal’s re-election,” Herring said, adding that Georgians have come to expect money to be spent on roads during election years.

Public officials “are perfectly willing to borrow money that will be paid over the next 20 years,” Herring said. “After all, Gov. Deal hopes to be around for the first fifth of that, and then he’s gone, regardless. So for the remaining 16 years other (administrations) are responsible for paying off Gov. Deal’s summer campaign spend-a-rama.”