Some big road projects won’t survive unless Richland penny program makes changes
Four major projects — including the widening of Atlas Road — could not be completed by Richland County’s penny tax program if the scope of $1 billion worth of projects is not scaled back, county officials.
A proposal developed by the county transportation department warns those projects would have to be dispensed with unless Richland County Council changes the scope of others and re-prioritizes the project list. The proposal is meant to bring the stalled road improvement program under budget and back on line.
The projects that could be dropped are the widening of Atlas Road, Broad River Road and Spears Creek Church Road, as well as planned intersection improvements at Clemson Road and Sparkleberry Lane.
Combined, those four projects would cost Richland County taxpayers $146.7 million, or $68.4 million more than anticipated when Richland County voters approved in 2012 a 1% sales tax to pay for the road and transportation improvement program.
Work on new penny projects has been frozen since last summer, as the program has struggled with ballooning costs that have taken the program millions of dollars past the original projections approved by voters. Work has continued on projects that were already under construction.
An option for saving those four projects would be to scale them back along with reducing the scope of other, less expensive projects.
“The criteria that has now been established for moving forward will hopefully ensure that we will move towards getting a lot of the projects back online, up and running, that have been placed on hold, legitimately so, due to some of our challenges of the past,” said Councilman Calvin “Chip” Jackson, who chairs the county’s transportation committee.
The changes could come because the new framework calls on public safety to be the top priority in choosing how to proceed, and that goal could be achieved on those roads with less expensive improvements.
“Rather than five lanes and a bike path, it’ll be two lanes with a center turn lane,” said Councilman Bill Malinowski of planned changes to Broad River Road. “At least that will get it done.”
For Atlas Road, saving money would mean narrowing the planned expansion to include only part of the road, stretching from Garners Ferry to Shop Road, but leaving the section from Shop Road to Bluff Road the same with some street improvements, at a savings of $9 million.
The most savings, $31 million, could come out of not widening Atlas at all, but that would not address the amount of traffic — and crashes — seen on the road.
Crash data provided by the county shows Atlas had 254 crashes over 3.5 years, including one fatality.
Atlas was originally supposed to cost $17.6 million, but current projections show have the project costing $45.3 million.
In all, a dozen remaining projects with cost estimates above the referendum amount would see costs cut by $140 million under the proposal. The county estimates the changes would bring the whole program $40 million under budget, with an additional $14.6 million in savings from projects already completed.
Richland’s penny tax has been plagued with increasing costs for years, and the county transportation department has been working on plans for moving forward since Richland County took over the program from a private management group last year.
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