Once facing $154 million deficit, Richland County gets penny roads plan under budget
Richland County Council thinks it has the county’s penny roads program back on course.
On Tuesday, county council members approved a scaled back plan for moving forward with the $1 billion transportation improvement program. Long beset by runaway costs that imperiled Richland County’s ability to finish all planned road improvements, transportation officials now project the program will come in under budget.
“This is an opportunity to take a giant step forward in a clear process,” Calvin “Chip” Jackson, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, told his colleagues. “We have an opportunity to restore public trust in terms of where we are today.”
Since voters approved the plan for penny tax-funded road improvements back in 2012, the program has seen cost projections soar until at one point the county was $154 million above the amounts approved in the referendum.
After adjustments, the county transportation office now projects the program will be $41.8 million under the referendum amounts. With another $14.6 million left over from completed projects, the office which took over the penny program from a private consortium last year now projects a $56.5 million surplus that will either function as a reserve fund for future cost overruns, or could be redistributed to other needs, like efforts to pave more of the county’s dirt roads.
But the adjustments will mean some projects will end up being less ambitious than originally projected. On Atlas Road, where widening plans at one point were projected to be $27.7 million over the referendum, the plan approved trims the project down from $45 million to $36.6 million. To get there, the project is dropping the paving of Atlas between Bluff and Shop roads, focusing entirely on widening to five lanes between Shop and Garners Ferry. The rest of Atlas would receive pedestrian improvements such as sidewalks.
Jackson said that change, and others, are justified by road data that guided the new project scopes. The section of Atlas being widened has the most traffic and the most auto accidents, he said.
Elsewhere, phase two improvements to Bluff Road has been cut from $40.3 million to just $3.5 million by abandoning plans for sidewalks and bike lanes and instead installing a traffic light at the intersection with Bluff Industrial Boulevard. An analysis by the transportation office said there would be little pedestrian or bicycle traffic in the area except during football games at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Improvements to Pineview Road were cut from $39.9 million to $8 million, by dropping plans to widen the road between Bluff and Shop roads, resurface the road and add pedestrian improvements. Now the county will only add a turn lane between Shop and Garners Ferry.
Jackson said the opening of an extension on Shop Road to the China Jushi manufacturing plant last year has alleviated some of the traffic pressure on Pineview.
Council Chairman Paul Livingston said the changes reflect data that shows how traffic patterns and needs have changed since the referendum almost eight years ago. He also notes the changes keep the original list of referendum projects intact, at least in some form.
“This is a better alternative, because otherwise we’d have to leave some projects out completely,” Livingston said.
Jackson emphasized the changes will “allow every project to be completed, and with some anticipated reserve funding,” he said. “To get that is a huge deal.”
Councilman Joe Walker was the only member to vote against the planned overhaul of the program, citing the county’s ongoing legal dispute with the state Department of Revenue. A preliminary DOR audit of the penny program identified more than $40 million of misspending in the program, and council members have been sharply divided on whether to settle on an amount to pay back into the program.
Walker argues the county shouldn’t move forward without a deal with DOR.
“I fundamentally disagree with any overhaul that does not incorporate the DOR audit and any subsequent repayment,” he said. “I don’t feel that has been comprehensively addressed, even though I appreciate the work our staff did to get these costs down.”
Faced with potential cost overruns, the county froze all work on penny projects last summer, before management of the program passed from the privately run Program Development Team to the county transportation office.
While county leaders commended the staff for getting the program under budget, they emphasized that work on the remaining projects would need to move quickly to avoid rising construction costs, which were blamed for the previous creep in projections.
“We can’t predict the future,” Livingston said. “When we brought (the program) in house, we extended the expected project time, but we’d want to move much quicker now if we could.”
Walker said he’s not concerned about potential cost increases affecting the new projections because of the economic disruption caused by the coronavirus. “We could see cost savings down the road,” he said.
Staff members said their current projects include a 10% buffer against any potential future cost increase.
Jackson said he hopes a program that had been bogged down for so long can now spring into action quickly.
“When I agreed to chair the transportation ad hoc committee two years ago, people said it was a crazy thing to do, to take on something so stepped in controversy and litigation,” Jackson said. “But I really want to do what is right, and not what’s easy.”
| Project | Referendum | Original Estimate | New Estimate |
| Atlas Widening | $17,600,000 | $45,308,464 | $36,300,000 |
| Bluff Phase 2 | $8,800,000* | $40,341,854 | $3,500,000 |
| Broad River widening | $29,000,000 | $39,663,756 | $30,000,000 |
| Lower Richland Blvd. widening | $6,100,000 | $6,708,092 | $5,000,000 |
| Polo Road widening/bike lane | $13,875,853 | $15,865,241 | $10,600,000 |
| Shop Road widening | $33,100,000 | $46,461,612 | $32,000,000 |
| Spears Creek Church Road | $26,600,000 | $49,492,027 | $20,000,000 |
| Pineview Road | $18,200,000 | $39,927,057 | $8,000,000 |
| Clemson Road/Sparkleberry Lane | $5,100,000 | $12,780,946 | $12,500,000 |
| Screaming Eagle Road/Percival Road | $1,000,000 | $3,105,147 | $1,600,000 |
*Amount leftover from combined phases 1 and 2 referendum amount
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 11:34 AM.
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