CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) – Safety improvements are in the works for the Crosstown in downtown Charleston after a Charleston legislative delegation meeting with the South Carolina Department of Transportation.
An SCDOT study found there were 1,118 car crashes in the corridor where U.S. 17 crosses the peninsula between July of 2017 and July of 2022. A deeper dive showed 15 pedestrians and 17 bikers suffered accidents at the crosstown in that time.
Chairman of the Roads and Bridges delegation committee, Rep. Matt Leber, says he’s grateful for these state driven studies.
“I mean we’ve had an incident in October, we’ve had an incident in June. I feel like especially after the testimony that we just heard, it’s high time that we have a solution here, it’s past time,” Leber says.
Rep. Wendell Gilliard says he remembers growing up in the area, walking the neighborhood streets and hearing about this issues at the local level long before he was elected to the State House.
“Having been on council for 10 years and knowing that we had complaints even back then, and here we are now. We’re still having complaints. We’re still having fatalities, people are still losing their lives,” Gilliard says.
SCDOT has recently completed a safety study for the corridor from Coming Street to Lockwood and will present the results and suggested fixes for pedestrian and biker safety in early 2024.
“I don’t want to undertake these sort of things without hearing from the public ever. So it’s important especially for folks that live in the area that do cross this dangerous road at times, we need to hear from them, we need to hear what they have to say,” Leber says.
Representatives say it’s up to the SCDOT professionals to come up with the plan. It could include anything from flashing pedestrian signs to raised crosswalks and that will be revealed for public input before it’s approved.
“We do need cooperation for local municipalities, county government working together hand in hand with the state legislature. It’s very important. Because one thing I do understand from experience, it’s going to get worse,” Gilliard says.
This particular plan will be aimed at pedestrian and biker safety and does not address congestion in the area. But, leaders note that the often protections for the most vulnerable road users include items that slow traffic flow, or even outright reduce speeds to prioritize safety. But in this case, other methods may come first.
“We talked about slowing down traffic, but you know, traffic is already slow at times, it’s those odd moments where it’s moving quickly and maybe a pedestrian is not necessarily paying attention and we have the tragic accidents that we’ve had. So I’m going to let the experts do the work that they need to do,” Leber says.
Representatives Marvin Pendarvis, Spencer Whetmore and Tom Hartnett were also at the meeting to discuss the topic and hear from SCDOT.
“So I want to work closely with the committee, with the DOT and public input and see what solutions might be available and see how fast we can implement them. Because that’s my desire to actually have solutions on the ground,” Leber says.
While the DOT can’t put a specific timeline on this project, they hope they can quickly get through the planning, feedback, and approval, and have it going in about two years.
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