What You Need to Know About 2 New Metro Atlanta Traffic Projects

The State Transportation Board Thursday approved bids for two major projects in metro Atlanta representing almost $6 billion in investment between them.

Board members voted unanimously to greenlight the addition of toll lanes along Georgia 400 in Fulton and Forsyth counties and an overhaul of the heavily congested Interstate 285/I-20 West interchange in Cobb and Fulton counties.

SR400 Peach Partners, a consortium of several road-building and engineering companies, won the bid for the Georgia 400 project at $4.6 billion. A second consortium, Legacy Infrastructure Contractors, won “best value” approval for the I-285/I-20 project with a bid of nearly $1.25 billion.

“This is a major milestone,” Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry said following the two votes. “We look forward to completing the journey.”

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The Georgia 400 project will add two toll lanes in each direction along the north-south highway from the North Springs MARTA station north to McGinnis Ferry Road and one toll lane in each direction from there north to McFarland Parkway.

Georgia 400 carries a traffic load of about 278,000 vehicles per day, which is projected to increase to 348,000 daily by 2046, Meg Pirkle, chief engineer for the state Department of Transportation, told board members Thursday.

As with other toll-lane projects the DOT has built, the new lanes will be optional for drivers willing to pay a toll to speed up their trip. Tolls will vary according to the level of traffic.

The State Road and Tollway Authority has issued 1.3 million Peach Passes to Georgia drivers since the first toll lanes were built more than a decade ago. Drivers use their Peach Passes for more than 2.4 million trips each month.

“I think it’s safe to say that metro Atlanta has embraced Express Lanes,” Pirkle said.

The Georgia 400 project also includes a transit component. MARTA plans to run a bus-rapid transit line using the insides of the toll lanes from the North Springs station north to a park-and-ride lot on Windward Parkway. Transit stations are planned for Holcomb Bridge Road and the North Point Mall.

The consortium that won the bid for the project has agreed to contribute up to $26 million to MARTA for the transit agency’s portion of the project, Pirkle said.

The toll lanes project is expected to begin construction during the third quarter of next year, with the new lanes due to open to traffic in 2031.

The I-285/I-20 overhaul is aimed at improving traffic flow at an interchange the American Transportation Research Institute has ranked the fifth-worst truck bottleneck in the nation, said Tim Matthews, assistant director of the DOT division in charge of projects built through public-private partnerships.

The work will involve removing the left-hand entrance and exit ramps and building a westbound collector-distributor system from the interchange to Fulton Industrial Boulevard. Several flyover ramps will be added, and several bridges will be replaced.

Construction is due to begin late next year, with the revamped interchange expected to open to traffic in 2030.

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