A new transportation policy analysis warns that charging concession fees on greenfield toll projects—newly constructed roads rather than existing ones—will lead to significantly higher tolls for drivers. Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation, published the commentary on June 26, 2026, calling the practice "inappropriate" and "damaging" to the viability of express toll lane projects. The analysis examines three recent public-private partnership (P3) projects that charged billions in fees despite having no existing assets to sell.
The report highlights three major cases where state transportation agencies collected concession fees on new construction projects. Georgia's State Route 400 Express Lanes project—the largest surface transportation P3 to date—required SR 400 Peach Partners to pay a $3.8 billion concession fee to the Georgia Department of Transportation on top of $4.6 billion in engineering, procurement, and construction costs. Virginia collected a $1.5 billion fee for express toll lanes added to I-66 Outside the Beltway. Pennsylvania's DOT is seeking a $200 million concession fee as part of a proposal to add express toll lanes to a congested portion of I-76. The SR 400 project also set records with a $3.89 billion TIFIA loan, $3.32 billion in tax-exempt private activity bonds, and $3.36 billion in equity—all for just 16 miles of barrier-separated express toll lanes.
"A concession fee on a greenfield toll project is a recipe for considerably higher tolls," Poole writes. The report explains that concession fees have a long history in brownfield projects, where a transportation agency seeks a P3 company to take over operation and management of an aging asset like the Chicago Skyway or Indiana Toll Road. In those cases, the concession fee represents the P3 company's initial cost of leasing the asset for 30 to 99 years. According to the analysis, this model is "an accepted practice worldwide" for asset recycling, where governments use upfront fees to fund new infrastructure, pay down debt, or shore up underfunded pension systems. When Indiana privatized the Indiana Toll Road 20 years ago, it used the concession fee to pay off outstanding toll road bonds and fund a 10-year statewide highway investment program.
The key difference is that greenfield projects have no existing revenue stream or asset to sell—the concession fee becomes an added cost that must be recovered from future toll payers. The report points to the I-66 Outside the Beltway express lanes, which have high toll rates and lower usage than most other express toll lane P3s, as evidence of this dynamic. Poole argues that artificially high toll rates created by concession fees give ammunition to critics who want to attack and discredit toll lane projects, especially those developed by for-profit entities. Express toll lanes already face skepticism, and forcing companies to recover billions in upfront payments through tolls only makes the political environment harder.
The report concludes that the P3 community would be "making a serious mistake" by continuing to add concession fees to express toll lane projects. Poole warns that while concession fees work well for brownfield infrastructure leases, they're fundamentally incompatible with new construction that relies on building public support through reasonable pricing. The bottom line: there's no free lunch, and drivers will pay the price for every dollar their state DOT collects upfront.