Sidewalks? More lanes? Bluff and Shop roads projects ahead of schedule

The biggest commitment yet to install pedestrian and biking pathways along major thoroughfares in Richland County may happen ahead of projections, an official working on the projects said.

But completion of the Bluff and Shop roads projects south of Columbia is still four years away.

The county is in the early stages of a $90 million plan to add 9 miles of 10-foot-wide pathways along either side of both roads. And the roads themselves will be widened to five lanes.

A potential snag in the projects was resolved last week as various agencies discussed who would maintain the pathways and the grassy areas alongside them, said David Beaty, head of a consortium of companies that is overseeing penny sales tax projects across the county.

Projects the size of Bluff and Shop roads generally take six to eight years to reach the start of construction, Beaty said. The two expansions should be finished by late 2021, he said, well ahead of what’s typical.

“The county is continuing to do what it committed to the voters in 2012 ... and to stay on schedule,” Beaty said. And a smaller upgrade of Clemson Road in Northeast Richland, including sidewalks, is likely to be done in three years, he said.

Pathways and sidewalks are required under the still-controversial $1 billion penny sales tax referendum that taxpayers approved in November 2012 to pay for transportation improvements, including a better bus system.

Residents who live or work along Bluff and Shop have been asking for the safety of sidewalks for years. The need along both thoroughfares spikes during the annual State Fair and University of South Carolina’s home football games, when parts of those roads are clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic and thousands of pedestrians.

Both roads have become even more congested in recent years because student housing complexes have sprouted south of the city.

The state Department of Transportation slowed things down recently. The agency balked at the maintenance of the pathways, which really are concrete sidewalks bordered by grassy buffers, Beaty said.

“These multi-use pathways are new to DOT, and maintenance was the issue,” Beaty said.

The agreement reached last week could require Richland County, the city of Columbia and even USC to maintain the sidewalks and buffers along the portions of the roads in their jurisdictions, he said. Details have not been worked out.

The state transportation agency has oversight authority because Bluff and Shop are state roads. Changes to them must meet state standards before the agency will accept the responsibility of maintaining them, said John Boylston, the state engineer over counties in the Midlands.

“They can’t proceed with certain stages without written permission from us,” Boylston said, characterizing the discussions as reflections of “a good working relationship.”

Beaty said if a settlement had not been reached, both projects could have been delayed by having to redesign the sidewalks and pathways. Updated plans would then require another round of public comment and resubmission to the state. The agreement clears the way to start construction in 2019, he said.

The county already has submitted three plans for Bluff and one for Shop since the widening plans were devised, Boylston said.

The plans presented to the public in August 2015 and March 2016 called for the 10-foot concrete sidewalks on both sides of the roads, but included 5-foot buffers between the sidewalk and the paved road, Beaty said. Walkers and bikers would share the sidewalk, and the buffer would add a measure of safety from road traffic, Beaty said.

If the state had rejected that plan, Bluff and Shop would have had 5-foot sidewalks separated from 4-foot bike paths. But the bike lanes would have been part of the roadway – not the sidewalk, he said.

John Fellows, Columbia’s planning administrator, said the 10-foot-plus-5-foot plan meets the city’s engineering standards for the portions inside of the municipality. But the more congested stretches of Bluff and Shop within Columbia could be as wide at 12 feet, he said.

Plans for both roads remain in the design stage, Boylston and Beaty said. The next stage, right-of-way acquisitions, could begin late this year or early in 2018, for a total of about 175 parcels. That normally takes roughly a year to complete.

If all goes smoothly, Beaty said, both long-awaited projects would be done by the end of 2021.

This story was originally published September 4, 2017 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Sidewalks? More lanes? Bluff and Shop roads projects ahead of schedule."