After a feasibility study that cost Gwinnett County taxpayers $1.4 million, a potential three-mile extension of Ronald Reagan Parkway has been shelved.
With an estimated cost of $250 million, the project would have created a toll road from the parkway’s current end-point at Pleasant Hill Road running west to a connection with I-85. It would have been the first road project in the county’s history to be built, financed, maintained and operated by a private company.
That company, Skanska, started a feasibility study of the project in 2009 that determined this year that the road would not generate enough money to cover its costs.
Kim Conroy, transportation director for Gwinnett County, told members of the project’s citizen advisory group in an email last month that the study found about 50,000 vehicles a day would use the road if it were in place today with no tolls. But that number drooped off “dramatically” when people were asked to fork over spare change to drive on it.
Conroy said the county’s $1.4 million portion of the study is the cost of doing business.
“I’m disappointed that it isn’t a viable project at this time,” Conroy said. “I would have liked that $1.4 million to result in a project we could build, of course. But I won’t say … it was wasted, because we have a work product that … in the future can be a viable project.”
“We are much better off to be making an informed decision based on analysis rather than embarking on a major project that has questionable chances of success in the current environment,” said Gwinnett Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Nash.
However, Janet Tobin said she doesn’t think the study was a good investment for taxpayers, and she’s relieved the road won’t be built. Tobin was a member of the citizen advisory committee from the neighborhood that would have been impacted by the extension.
Tobin said the advisory group hasn’t met in more than a year, and wasn’t aware that a decision was imminent when it received Conroy’s Feb. 21 email saying the project wouldn’t proceed.
“I know the traffic situation is really frustrating at Pleasant Hill right now,” Tobin said. “I live in the area and I avoid that intersection at all cost.” But she questioned whether it was worth spending millions “to save three or four minutes in drive time.”
That was the main problem cited in the feasibility study — many people would be hesitant to pay a toll that would allow them to zip along the new roadway for three miles, only to be dumped into the rush-hour crawl on the interstate.
Conroy said in the email that the project might become viable in the future, particularly if a project such as converting portions of I-85 into reversible toll lanes is ever completed. Skanska is evaluating that project for the state.
“If the lanes could seamlessly connect to Ronald Reagan Parkway, then the extension could become a more attractive option,” Conroy wrote in the email.
Regardless of whether it ever gets built, a power point presentation created by the Gwinnett County Transportation Department says the study will help the county with future planning because it provides:
- forecast use of the road, both tolled and nontolled.
- an analysis of three potential alignments for the extension.
- an inventory of ecological, historical and archaeological resources in the study area.
- construction cost estimates and value-engineering suggestions.
- and the process provided "an unprecedented level of transparency into the project's development."
Tobin said she doubts that last one.
“The county deserves good grades for having a website” dedicated to the project, Tobin said. “But the traffic on there was nil. They would include our comments, but it was so sanitized. There was one meeting where things got confrontational, but if you looked at the meeting minutes, you’d never know it.
“The citizen’s advisory group didn’t really have any impact.”
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