State prolonged Ga. 400 toll based on faulty premise

Sources: Georgia Department of Transportation, State Road and Tollway Authority

For more than two years, Ga. 400 drivers have gone above and beyond, stopping to pay the toll after the toll’s promised cutoff date.

Now they have something to show for it: a dozen extra projects, either completed or under way, stretching along the highway all the way up to McFarland Road.

But, like so much else about the Ga. 400 toll, there’s a twist. Back in 2011, when the toll was set to end, the state could have already squirrelled away enough to do many of those projects, including the biggest and most important one.

As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out to Gov. Sonny Perdue when he announced the extension in 2010, projections by the State Road and Tollway Authority showed that it would have a $42.5 million in the bank if it ended the toll on schedule. That could have funded the long-desired interchange at I-85 and Ga. 400, with millions left over.

But that wasn’t the message Perdue was giving the public.

“Without a new toll in that corridor, the earliest that any improvement projects could take place is 2020 … Of course the most pressing need is finally completing the Ga. 400/I-85 interchange,” Perdue said at a 2010 press conference announcing the extension.

Howard Shook, who represents Buckhead on the Atlanta City Council, accepted Perdue’s decision based on statements like those. At the time Shook told the AJC he wasn’t aware the reserves might do the job of building the I-85/Ga. 400 interchange.

“I’ve been told that’s not nearly enough,” by SRTA, he said then. “If there was a way to make our community whole without doing it (extending the toll) I’d be real interested,” Shook said.

Perdue displayed a more nuanced grasp of the finances. When asked by the AJC about the state’s internal estimates, which showed the interchange could likely be funded by existing reserves with money to spare, he didn’t argue.

He replied that that wasn’t an option, “because we’re doing more than that, and more needs to be done.”

Perdue did not respond last week to two voicemails left at the offices of his company.

The toll ends this week because his successor, Nathan Deal, decided to amend Perdue’s decision. Deal’s action came last year as local business leaders tried frantically — and unsuccessfully — to persuade voters to ratify the regional T-SPLOST.

Thus the Ga. 400 toll is scheduled to cease Friday night, 875 days after originally promised. It has brought in more than $45 million in those two-plus extra years.

Meanwhile, the winning bid to design and build the I-85 interchange came in at $21.4 million, much lower than a $40 million estimate put forth by SRTA. Even with mild cost overruns, the project won’t come close to consuming the $42.5 million reserve that existed in 2011. Nor will reimbursing the Department of Transportation for $4 million worth of preliminary work on the project from back in 2007.

On the bright side, the leftover reserves, combined with money from the extended toll, can buy a lot of additional stuff. The state even kicked in $26 million when Deal decided to end the toll this year, to pay back the investors who bought bonds that were to be repaid through the toll revenue generated over the next seven years.

SRTA has used much of the new funding to cover its operational expenses, but the money also made possible some important projects, including those outside the Perimeter, said Bert Brantley, deputy executive director of SRTA.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes said he wished the toll would continue and fund even more projects.

It should be viewed as part of a unified transportation system, he said, funding projects such as the I-285/Ga. 400 interchange, but also expanding rail lines. Ga. 400 is congested already, Barnes said, “and if you don’t provide some alternatives to it, it’s going to be unusable.”

As things are, the money has allowed the state to beef up projects like the Northridge Road interchange, which was upgraded from a mere widening to a total bridge replacement, which will last longer. The toll windfall also made possible the “flex lanes” recently proposed by Deal.

Some of the projects, including improvements at Northridge, have the potential to fix gruesome traffic tie-ups — none more so than the I-85/Ga. 400 interchange.

It was a long time coming, said former Atlanta mayor and Buckhead Coalition president Sam Massell. “That’s a tremendous benefit to Buckhead,” Massell said, a “win-win” for the retail businesses and local shoppers whose surface streets such as Sidney Marcus Boulevard have clogged for two decades with drivers wending their circuitous way from one highway to the other.

In the end, getting relief from that splitting headache may help drivers overcome their ire over two years of extended tolls — even if the extension wasn’t actually necessary.

“I really appreciate that, because Sidney Marcus is not the most fun to navigate,” said Neka Ferebee, a Smyrna engineer and occasional Ga. 400 driver. “It’s hard to be happy to pay more money, but it’s easy to be happy for something positive.”