It frustrates drivers now, but improvements are coming to this busy Lexington road
Don’t worry, drivers along Old Cherokee Road in Lexington. Your eyelashes soon will be a little safer.
In May, The State published a story asking readers to share what they think are some of the worst roads in the Midlands. Readers could share concerns about heavy traffic on a given road, or they could have a beef with the conditions of the roads themselves.
The paper received a plethora of responses, and many of them were exactly the kind you would expect. Malfunction Junction, the infamous tangle where Interstates 20, 26 and 126 meet, was a popular answer, of course. (The state is in the early stages of a years-long, $2 billion project to address that vehicular maelstrom.) And there were responses that called out U.S. 378 in Lexington, which ferries 43,000 cars per day along a corridor that connects from downtown Lexington to the doorstep of downtown Columbia, as a maddening stretch.
But a perhaps surprising answer that kept popping up among readers’ least favorite roads was Old Cherokee Road in Lexington County. That mostly two-lane road stretches from the western part of the county all the way into the commercial parts of the town. It includes everything from the massive Mt. Horeb Methodist Church to multiple public schools to numerous medical offices to bunches of residential subdivisions.
It’s the kind of road that, decades ago, was a bucolic rural stretch. But amid the wildfire, sprawling growth of Lexington — the county’s population has swelled from 167,000 in 1990 to more than 300,000 in 2021, per census data — Old Cherokee has become a bustling thoroughfare, as residents look to connect from unincorporated areas of the county into town and back.
One respondent to The State’s recent worst roads callout said traffic is “horrible” on Old Cherokee and that “Potholes are patched, but reappear. Too many homes, schools, buildings.”
Another reader put it more succinctly:
“This road makes me want to pull my eyelashes out individually,” she said.
But help is on the way.
According to officials from the state Department of Transportation and the town of Lexington, more than $6 million in work is either underway or scheduled for Old Cherokee and includes everything from a new traffic roundabout at a busy intersection, resurfacing of a long stretch of the road and upgrades that aim to improve traffic flow where Old Cherokee meets North Lake Drive.
One of those projects already is well underway. A traffic roundabout is being constructed at the intersection of Old Cherokee and St. Peters Road. That $2 million project is expected to be completed this summer, Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kelly Moore said. The traffic circle was functionally operational when a reporter drove through Thursday afternoon, though supplemental construction was still going on.
Roundabouts, particularly on busy secondary roads, have become an increasingly popular traffic solution in South Carolina.
“The traffic safety office has seen tremendous success in crash reductions through the construction of roundabouts,” Moore said. “In South Carolina, we have found that they reduce total intersection crashes by 66% and injury crashes approximately 79%.”
The roundabout likely will come as welcome addition for frequent drivers in the Old Cherokee and St. Peters corridor, fixing an intersection that has been oddly offset for years.
Lexington County resident Kerry Murphy once lived in the Governor’s Grant neighborhood, not far from Old Cherokee Road, for a decade, and still regularly traverses the busy area. Several years ago, one of his children got in a car accident at the Old Cherokee and St. Peters intersection. The young driver was ultimately fine — it was just a fender bender — but the incident was indicative of the bump-ups that can be common there.
Murphy, an attorney, said he’s enthused by the idea of the new roundabout.
“I like what they are doing there,” Murphy said. “That should be a huge improvement. I’m a big fan of traffic circles.”
‘It impacts our residents’
Next on the docket will be a $2.25 million resurfacing project that will run along Old Cherokee from the intersection of St. Peters Road down to the area near Belfry Drive. (That project also will resurface connecting Pilgrim Church Road.) Moore, the Department of Transportation spokeswoman, said that project likely will begin this month and should be completed by the end of the summer.
Moore said the upgrades should provide a “safe, smooth driving surface.”
Moore noted the work is coming as part of a 10-year plan by the state’s roads agency, which kicked in after an increase in funding implemented in the 2017 state roads bill. The plan focuses on four key areas: highway safety, structurally deficient bridges, road resurfacing and interstate widening.
The town of Lexington also has improvement plans for a part of Old Cherokee. Specifically, Mayor Steve MacDougall said the town has a plan for an eventual more than $2 million upgrade to the intersection of Old Cherokee and North Lake Drive. That section of North Lake Drive is a four-lane affair flanked by a host of businesses and is a key artery out to Lake Murray.
The mayor said there would be new signaling at the intersection, as well as additional lanes. There is not yet a firm timeline for the start of that project, but it is in the town’s long-range traffic plan, the mayor said.
While certain parts of Old Cherokee are in the unincorporated areas of the county, there are major pieces that are annexed into the town, MacDougall noted, including Mt. Horeb church, New Providence Elementary School and the sprawling Sterling Bridge subdivision, just to name a few.
Regardless of jurisdiction, MacDougall said the town pays attention to the comings and goings on the roads that are crucial thoroughfares into and out of the city limits.
“We have to, because all those people travel through our town,” MacDougall said. “It impacts our residents. We have to think about (traffic in Lexington) globally, right? We can’t just think about the roads in town. We’ve got several sister cities where people live that all travel through (parts of Lexington) to get to downtown Columbia. Period. They have to go this way. So, yeah, we think about it all the time.”
