Widening SC’s I-95 would cost $4 billion, road agency estimates

It would cost up to $4 billion to widen Interstate 95 to six lanes in South Carolina, transportation officials said Monday.

That initial estimate includes widening about 190 miles of the interstate to three lanes in each direction from the state’s border with Georgia to the border with North Carolina, replacing bridges along the interstate and improving interchanges.

But it could be years before the state has enough money to pay for the widening project. The project also would have to rank high enough on Transportation Department priority lists to be fixed.

I-95 bottlenecks in South Carolina, especially during high-trafficked holiday weekends. The three-lane road in Georgia shrinks to two lanes entering the Palmetto State.

“A project of that magnitude, first of all, would be unprecedented,” Transportation Department Secretary Christy Hall said at the annual meeting of the S.C. Alliance to Fix Our Roads, a group of road contractors and consultants who want more money spent on road-building projects. The widening project likely would be completed in segments and phases, she said.

Federal money eventually could pay for part of the project.

“I do believe the (President Donald) Trump administration is serious about an infrastructure program,” Hall said.

The Transportation Department is in the process of updating its priority list for interstate improvements. It plans to unveil that list in the coming months, Hall said.

Rural parts of I-95 are included in the Transportation Department’s $50 million-a-year plan to make rural roads safer. That plan, unveiled last week, includes spending money to re-paint pavement markings, installing rumble strips to alert drivers they are near the road’s edge and widening road shoulders to give drivers time to correct if they run off the road.

However, the agency has said it needs added state or federal dollars to pay for those improvements.

The $50 million is part of much greater sum — an extra $943 million a year — that the Transportation Department says it needs to make the state’s deteriorating roads safer, including spending $500 million to re-pave crumbling highways.

Last week, House GOP leaders introduced a proposal to raise the state’s 16.75-cent-a-gallon gas tax by 10 cents over five years. That increase, along with raising other driving fees, would raise roughly $600 million a year for road repairs when enacted.

Legislators last week indicated there is appetite for a gas tax increase this year, in part because Gov. Nikki Haley is leaving office.

"When she’s gone, our chances of passing common-sense legislation go up exponentially," said S.C. House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.

State Sen. Thomas McElveen, D-Sumter, said that Haley has been an impediment to raising the gas tax. In 2015, Haley said she would veto any gas-tax hike that was not tied to a much larger income tax cut.

Haley is expected to resign from office sometime this week after the U.S. Senate confirms her become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Soon-to-be Gov. Henry McMaster has not said if he would veto a gas-tax increase.

Rutherford said the proposed House plan doesn’t raise enough money for roads.

"It is simply not enough," Rutherford said, adding arguments against raising the gas tax even more — including relying on local penny tax programs to pay for road projects and changing the structure of the Transportation Department — are shell games.

This story was originally published January 23, 2017 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Widening SC’s I-95 would cost $4 billion, road agency estimates."