State prolonged Ga. 400 toll based on faulty premise | www.myajc.com

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.