James July-August 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 52
construction value of $700,000,000
to $800,000,000. And the other one
GDOT is addressing is the opposite
side of I-20 at I-285 on the west side
over on the Fulton County side. And
that project is just getting going.
The largest single project in the
state right now though is the State
Route 400 Express Lane project,
along Georgia 400, starting around
Abernathy Road to the North
Springs Marta Station and going 16
miles up into the southern part of
Forsyth County to McFarland Road.
“This is a very unique public
private partnership where the
state of Georgia, the State Road
and Tollway Authority (SRTA) and
Georgia DOT enter into a partnership with a private developer who
is called State Route 400 Peach
Partners,” said McMurry. “This
project is amazing. The construction value of building express lanes,
the 16 miles of express lanes, is
about $4,600,000,000. In addition
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to building the express lanes, they
will also do major rehabilitation and
replacement of a lot of the existing State Route 400 roadway and
basically the state does not have to
pay for this work being done. The
private sector will pay for this work
to be done by financing it through
the tolls to be collected from the
express lanes over a fifty-year term.”
For the transit-minded folks, the
SR 400 Express Lanes project also
includes a $100 million state bond
investment for MARTA’s Bus Rapid
Transit (BRT) line, which will ride for
free in the express lanes. The BRT
line will begin at North Springs MARTA Station and extend northward to
the Windward Parkway MARTA Park
and Ride, a planned transit-oriented
development location. The private
sector partner will be responsible
for building significant portions of
two BRT stations at Holcomb Bridge
Road and at North Point Mall area
and direct access to North Springs
station and Windward Parkway. SR
400 Peach Partners will provide an
additional $26 million to MARTA to
support the BRT build out.
At a time of tremendous cost
increases for infrastructure, McMurry credits Gov. Brian Kemp and the
legislature for leadership and strategy in continuing to move GDOT
forward. “We’re seeing significantly
higher cost to do projects, which
means we can do less projects. The
governor certainly recognized that,
the House speaker and lieutenant
governor certainly recognized that.
And they wanted us to be sure that
we could continue to advance projects in this environment.
From quarry to community
One way that the logistics industry and its many pieces are set apart,
is it is decidedly not a “service”
industry. But from beginning to end,
the work in logistics and transportation is on the ground, or under the
