Gwinnett plans to make Phase II of the Sugarloaf Parkway extension a toll road

[afguy]

County officials confirmed that the new section of the Sugarloaf extension will be a toll road to help pay for the project. The county is seeking a variety of funding sources to pay for the extension project, including a $105 million federal grant that Gwinnett commissioners voted Tuesday to apply for.

The remaining $179.8 million of the project cost will be covered by a mixture of local, state, other federal funding and toll collections.

"We believe that this is the model that allows us to fully fund the project,"  Gwinnett County Transportation Director Alan Chapman said. "We've got limited local resources. We have so many transportation needs county wide that we just can't fully fund it locally."

County officials said the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension Phase II will follow the path state officials had laid out years ago for Gwinnett's section of the old northern arc proposal.

"The state is transferring that right of way to us, so we've already got a lot of money at the state and local level in that section of the road,"  Gwinnett county Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Nash said.

The tolls would only apply to the section of Sugarloaf Parkway that will be built during Phase II. All sections of the road that have already been built and are open to the public – which currently stretches from Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Duluth to Highway 316 east of Lawrenceville – will remain free for drivers to use.

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/local/gwinnett-plans-to-make-phase-ii-of-the-sugarloaf-parkway/article_187ccaee-6c2f-56ef-a41a-f7d631dcc375.html

[adventurernumber1]

I am extremely excited for this!! I did wonder if the Sugarloaf Parkway would be having any more extensions. The existing limited-access part is an absolutely beautiful road (I haven't been on it in real life, but I have looked at it many times on the internet), and it sure has a nice, new interchange with Georgia Highway 316. I am all for this new project, even if the limited-access road will be tolled. If tolls are necessary to get the job done, then I am all for it! With that said, in retrospect, I think it would have been a much better idea to originally make GA SR 316 a tolled, 6-lane (maybe more on certain sections), limited-access road in its entirety, because the current traffic situation is horrible, especially during football season (due to UGA being located in Athens). Now it is a slow, painful process to gradually transform that road into a freeway. This news is also very interesting, because IIRC, up until a few years ago (when the tolls on GA 400 in Atlanta were removed in 2013 or so), Georgia had one tolled road, and it was that - now for the past few years, after that, Georgia has had no tolled roads (not counting express lanes, I am referring to fully tolled roads). Now that will change, after this project is completed, and the state of Georgia will once again have at least one fully tolled road.

I am incredibly intrigued and cannot wait to see what the final product will look like, once it is finished! 

[Gnutella]

I am extremely excited for this!! I did wonder if the Sugarloaf Parkway would be having any more extensions. The existing limited-access part is an absolutely beautiful road (I haven't been on it in real life, but I have looked at it many times on the internet), and it sure has a nice, new interchange with Georgia Highway 316. I am all for this new project, even if the limited-access road will be tolled. If tolls are necessary to get the job done, then I am all for it! With that said, in retrospect, I think it would have been a much better idea to originally make GA SR 316 a tolled, 6-lane (maybe more on certain sections), limited-access road in its entirety, because the current traffic situation is horrible, especially during football season (due to UGA being located in Athens). Now it is a slow, painful process to gradually transform that road into a freeway. This news is also very interesting, because IIRC, up until a few years ago (when the tolls on GA 400 in Atlanta were removed in 2013 or so), Georgia had one tolled road, and it was that - now for the past few years, after that, Georgia has had no tolled roads (not counting express lanes, I am referring to fully tolled roads). Now that will change, after this project is completed, and the state of Georgia will once again have at least one fully tolled road.

I am incredibly intrigued and cannot wait to see what the final product will look like, once it is finished! 

I drive between Athens and Cumming a lot, so I look forward to this. GA 20 has too damn much traffic on it between GA 316 and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Sometimes it takes me less than an hour and a half to get from Athens to Cumming, and sometimes it takes more than two hours. Stuff as fickle as the traffic signal timing can add half an hour or more to the trip time.

[golden eagle]

I used to live about a mile or less from Sugarloaf in the early 2000s. If I have my bearings straight, it ended at GA 120 towards Lawrenceville. I understand the area has grown by leaps and bounds since I moved away.