May 11, 2006 9:30 AM, EDT

Firm Proposes Truck-Only Toll Lanes in Atlanta

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inancial firm Goldman, Sachs & Co. is proposing to expand Interstate 285 to add truck-only toll lanes on the western side of Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday.

The company is submitting its plan under a Georgia public-private initiative law and plans to present it to the state’s transportation board next week, the paper said.

Enacted last year, the new law allows private companies to propose projects on public roads, and to pay for them with tolls, the Journal-Constitution reported.

Some critics said the said move was leapfrogging the normal process for such a move, the paper said.

A proposal for truck-only toll lanes and high-occupancy toll lanes on I-75 and I-575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties has been in formal negotiations since December, it reported.

If the proposal goes through, the I-75 truck lane traffic may then converge and bottleneck where the highway meets I-285, which the Goldman Sachs proposal addresses, the paper said.