An Atlanta-based road-building team will take the wheel on the costliest transportation project in state history if all goes as planned, the state Department of Transportation’s board decided Tuesday in a historic vote.
Northwest Express Roadbuilders — a joint venture between Archer Western Contractors, headquartered in Atlanta, and Hubbard Construction Company of Winter Park, Fla. — was named Tuesday as the best of three potential suitors to design and build optional toll lanes along a 30-mile stretch of I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties. The team still has to make it through final negotiations before the contract is signed in November.
If that happens, the construction is to start late next year. Commuters should start to see two new reversible lanes being built on the west side of I-75 between I-285 and I-575. A single reversible lane also will be added in the I-75 center median above the I-575 interchange extending to Hickory Grove Road, and on I-575 from where it branches off from I-75 out to Sixes Road. The reversible lanes will be separated from the main road by barriers and are expected to open in the spring of 2018.
Northwest Express Roadbuilders promised to deliver innovative designs at the cheapest cost with the fastest delivery date.
The vote marks the most concrete step taken in the nine-year effort to construct this project. The lanes are slated to be among the first of what planners hope will eventually become an extensive network of optional toll lanes along major highways in the metro Atlanta region, if the state can find the money.
“It’s a significant step for the entire region” and a signal that the project is going to get built, said Tad Leithead, chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Leithead noted that the move comes one week short of the anniversary of the failed T-SPLOST referendum.
via Georgia company to build I-75/I-575 toll lanes | www.myajc.com.
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