Atlanta Business Chronicle
From the February 20, 2006 print edition
Lori Johnston - Contributing writer
Merge: Public-private partnerships highlight changing role of engineers in highway construction
A proposed transportation project marrying public highways to private funds would be the first of its kind in Georgia and is a reflection of the changing role of engineers in road construction.
If approved, the proposed Northwest Corridor project will be the first public-private initiative in Georgia, and it comes at a time when private funds are necessary to lighten the load on the country's interstate highway system, which is 50 years old this year.
The Georgia Department of Transportation's treasurer, Earl Mahfuz, said as funding for road projects falls farther and farther behind transportation needs, the public-private initiatives provide funding alternatives for transportation projects and shorten the completion time at minimum cost to the state.
"It's one of the tools in the toolbox that departments of transportation have to deliver projects," said Jim Dell, manager of business development for Bechtel Infrastructure Corp. "I think the primary issue is trying to get the projects done faster."
Bechtel, in a joint venture with Gilbert Southern Corp. and C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., form Georgia Transportation Partners, the organization that proposed the Northwest Corridor project.
The GDOT board in December approved a letter of intent to negotiate with Georgia Transportation Partners. Georgia Transportation Partners has two concepts for interstates 75 and 575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties.
One plan would provide optional express toll lanes and lanes for bus rapid transit vehicles -- vehicles that look like buses but that passengers board like trains -- at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion; the other concept would boost the cost to $1.8 billion by adding truck-only toll lanes on I-75.
Bill Jordan, project director with Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan Inc. (PBS&J), said some engineers are not comfortable working on public-private initiatives because they represent a departure from engineers' traditional role in road construction.
In the past, contractors would do as engineers told them; but with public-private initiatives, contractors, designers and engineers are working together more to create the plan, the design-build mentality.
Despite the debate, Jordan said, public-private initiatives are an emerging market that his firm has made a strategic plan to pursue. "An engineer has to be willing to be pushed out of its comfort zone," he said.
PBS&J, which is a member of the Georgia Transportation Partners team, has been involved with all three unsolicited public-private initiatives proposals to GDOT, for the Northwest Corridor, Georgia 316 -- the proposed toll road from Atlanta to Athens -- and Ga. 400.
The Northwest Corridor concept differs from the rejected public-private initiative proposal for Ga. 316 in several ways.
The Ga. 316 plan would have converted the existing road to make it a limited-access freeway financed by tolls.
In the Northwest Corridor project, the toll lanes would be optional for drivers, and the state would own the toll road and receive toll revenue to pay off bonds.
The Northwest Corridor also is touted as a plan that will relieve traffic congestion by adding capacity and new transportation options, such as the bus rapid transit lanes, save time for truckers and toll-lane users and save money by completing the project in less time than if funded only through public dollars.
Dell said Georgia Transportation Partners looked at corridors around the state and found the Northwest Corridor to be one of the most congested in the region and also one that lacked sufficient funds.
Under the traditional pay-as-you-go approach, the improvements wouldn't be complete for another 20 to 25 years, compared with seven years under the Georgia Transportation Partners' plan.
The typical time savings anticipated for the full length of the corridor range from 14 to 22 minutes in 2015 to 29 to 38 minutes in 2030.
"When you look at the project itself and you look at the real cost and convenience, during that period of time the capacity improvements are going to add 36 percent capacity in general purpose lanes. That's not the toll lanes," Mahfuz said. "That's pretty staggering."
Although the public-private initiatives are an immediate solution to some road-funding traffic jams, no one believes they will replace the conventional way of doing road construction projects.
"If anybody thinks it's going to be the panacea or salvation of the transportation fund, it isn't," Mahfuz said.
Mahfuz said such initiatives will not make up more than 4 percent to 5 percent of all transportation projects in Georgia.
And Jordan estimates that less than 10 percent of engineering firms are likely to be partners in public-private initiatives, partly because of the financial and time commitment required as early as the conception of the project.
"It takes about $1 million to put a proposal together before you ever submit it to the DOT. The engineer bears a great deal of that cost," he said.