SR 400 Express Lanes

Georgia is spending $4.6 billion to add tolled capacity to one of metro Atlanta’s most congested corridors, and it is doing it with private money and private risk. The SR 400 Express Lanes project reached financial close on an $11 billion package — the largest TIFIA loan ever issued paired with a record U.S. P3 bond sale — and broke ground on April 22, 2026. FlatironDragados and Acciona Construction are building it. Traffic is targeted for 2031.

Project Scope

The corridor runs roughly 16 miles, from the MARTA North Springs Station in Fulton County to about a mile north of the SR 400 / McFarland Parkway interchange in Forsyth County. Two tolled express lanes go in each direction between North Springs and McGinnis Ferry Road. North of McGinnis Ferry to McFarland, it drops to one lane each way.

The capital stack is the story as much as the concrete: a $3.9 billion TIFIA loan, private activity bonds, and $3.4 billion in developer equity from the Meridiam-led SR 400 Peach Partners consortium. Construction runs about 5.5 years. The concession then carries a 50-year operations and maintenance term, which means the developer, not GDOT, eats the long-term pavement and tolling-system risk.

Why It Matters

This is the clearest test yet of whether demand-risk P3s can carry American highway capacity. Availability-payment deals shift construction risk but leave the public agency holding traffic risk. Here the consortium is betting equity on toll revenue that will not start flowing until 2031, in a corridor whose growth assumptions depend on north Fulton and Forsyth continuing to add jobs and rooftops.

GDOT’s Major Mobility Investment Program has been leaning this direction for years. If SR 400 delivers on budget and the tolls perform, expect the model to spread to I-285 and the rest of the managed-lane pipeline. If it doesn’t, the next Georgia governor inherits a very public argument about who should have taken the traffic risk.

Project Team & Details