‘Love-hate relationship’: Forest Drive traffic annoys drivers, boosts local businesses
The Cardinal Crossing development on Forest Drive once had residents worried about a steep increase in traffic. The numbers say that hasn’t happened, but the area is still notorious for causing traffic headaches.
When the Cardinal Crossing residential and retail development was completed in 2020, it joined dozens of businesses, including three grocery stores, three auto repair shops, about 15 restaurants, stores, salons and medical practices, on a little over a half-mile stretch of Forest Drive between Clemson Avenue and Trenholm Plaza.
On this part of Forest Drive, left-hand turns can be a daunting task and motorists often have to sit through two cycles at the traffic light at North Trenholm Road and Forest Drive intersection during peak hours.
Residents feared the Cardinal Crossing project would only worsen an already congested thoroughfare. It might not seem like it when driving through the area at rush hour, but the data says that hasn’t been the case.
The numbers
The Cardinal Newman School on Forest Drive closed in 2016 after 54 years on the site to move to Alpine Road. The Cardinal Crossing mixed-use redevelopment was approved for the former Cardinal Newman property by Forest Acres City Council later that year. It would add 256 apartments, 18 business spaces and potentially a lot more cars to the neighborhood.
Over 24,000 vehicles per hour passed through the stretch of Forest Drive directly in front of the Cardinal Crossing site the year the school closed in 2016, according to data from the Department of Transportation. That number had increased to 27,000 in 2019 – the year businesses began moving into the Cardinal development – before declining to 25,000 in 2020 and 2021.
The number of cars increased again to 26,000 in 2022, but was still less than the peak in 2019, according to the data. This drop in numbers can likely be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shawn Greenwood, city administrator for Forest Acres, said.
“I think part of that is the people who figured out they don’t have to come downtown to work and (can) work from home,” he said. “During the pandemic when those numbers dropped, I think that’s what you’re kind of seeing.”
Similar slumps in hourly traffic counts can be seen at other thoroughfares in the city in the same period, according to the DOT data.
While traffic counts, aside from the decline during the pandemic, have increased on Forest Drive since the Cardinal Crossing development, vehicle collisions and injuries have decreased since the school closed and the apartments and businesses opened, according to data from the state Department of Public Safety.
Between 2013 and 2016, there were an average of six collisions and five injuries from accidents per year on Forest Drive between North Beltline Road and North Trenholm Road, according to DPS data. Those numbers fell to three collisions and two injuries a year between 2017 and 2022.
The number of cars passing through Forest Drive doesn’t give a complete picture of how those cars interact with local businesses either.
Studies have shown that a large part of the traffic passing through the area does not stop within Forest Acres’ downtown on Forest Drive, Greenwood said. Rather, that traffic is moving from Fort Jackson or I-77 towards downtown Columbia or vice versa, especially when other roads are blocked by accidents or road work. He expects this to continue to be the case as areas around Columbia grow in population, he said.
“Especially with the rush hour…our congested areas, those are people driving through the city, not coming to the city,” he said. “We try to control that the best we can, but unfortunately, we are just a good avenue to get from downtown to I-77 quickly.”
The retail property at Cardinal Crossing began leasing in 2019 and the apartments were occupied throughout 2020, Lynssey Baker, spokesman for Forest Acres, said.
Before the development was approved, a study was done by the Department of Transportation to see what the traffic impacts of the project would be, Greenwood said.
The study showed that replacing the school with apartments and businesses would not have a major impact on overall traffic on Forest Drive, Greenwood said. This is because mixed use developments like Cardinal Crossing spread out their peak traffic times more than a school.
Different land uses bring traffic at different times, he said – a school will bring traffic around morning drop-off and afternoon dismissal, restaurants are busier around mealtimes, and apartments are used at different times throughout the day.
“We take that into account whenever we’re looking at planning these big developments,” he said. “That’s why you really kind of want to have a mixture of uses, because you spread out the overall traffic to different times. You spread out the overall parking to different times. And it’s just a much more sustainable approach to using those large tracts of land.”
A traffic study is usually done for redevelopments that will change the use of a piece of land, Greenwood said. The study will consider overall traffic counts – the number of cars passing through a stretch of road every hour – and the number of entrances and exits into a property.
Death, taxes and traffic on Forest Drive
When the Cardinal Crossing development was first approved, a business district was created to allow Forest Acres to use revenue from the property taxes for traffic improvements on Forest Drive.
Richland County Council has approved $4 million to be set aside for Forest Drive over the next ten years, if the property taxes generate at least that much in that period, Greenwood said. Based on last year’s tax revenue, the development is on track to make that amount by the end of the ten year period, he said.
The city originally planned to use the money to install a series of computerized traffic lights, but the DOT installed the lights without using the city’s funds, Greenwood said.
The money hasn’t been used yet, but the city is considering it for the replacement of a small bridge on Forest Lake Place, which serves as an alternate route to Forest Drive and could help relieve traffic, Greenwood said. Construction on the bridge began in fall 2022 and is expected to open in late 2023 or early 2024, according to the City of Forest Acres website.
The city has also engaged landscape architects to look at intersection improvements for aesthetics and traffic calming, Greenwood said.
Along with the new traffic lights system, the DOT also installed barriers preventing cars from turning left when leaving the Cardinal Crossing parking lot, Greenwood said. He said these improvements have helped the overall traffic flow on Forest Drive.
Several business owners agree.
Anne Hall, co-owner of OH Salon across Forest Drive from Cardinal Crossing, said she remembers people in the community being concerned about traffic when the redevelopment was announced.
“When they were first putting it up, we were definitely worried about it,” she said. “We’re a hair salon, so there’s a lot of talk in the community and stuff like that. People were definitely talking about it, about if it was gonna be a problem or not.”
However, in the years since the development, Hall said she hasn’t noticed any traffic problems directly related to Cardinal Crossing – Forest Drive can be congested regardless, but the design of entrances in and out of the Cardinal complex help keep traffic moving, she said.
“Traffic is always bad on Forest Drive and it depends on the time of day,” Donna Williams, an employee at Kudzu Bakery on Forest Drive, said. “But it flows pretty well and people are pretty generous about letting people in and out and being considerate of other people, is what I’ve found.”
George Fisher, owner of Strobler Home Furnishings on Forest Drive, said he was worried about traffic when the store first moved to its current location from its previous spot on Devine Street, but it hasn’t been as bad as he thought.
He said driving on Forest Drive is “a walk in the park” compared to other traffic–heavy areas in the area, like Harbison Boulevard or parts of Lexington County. Despite the neighborhood’s original concerns, he doesn’t think Cardinal Crossing made traffic any worse, he said.
“I also think if you plan your trip it’s very easy to get where you’re going,” he said. “So if you think ahead – if people are concerned about traffic, just think ahead about where they’re going, it’s pretty easy to get in and out of.”
A ‘love-hate’ relationship
Though Hall was concerned about traffic when the Cardinal Crossing development was announced, she said now her salon has many new clients who walk over from the apartments.
Forest Acres residents have a “love hate relationship with traffic,” Greenwood said. But the high traffic counts of Forest Drive help drive up the value of retail space on the corridor and attract businesses, he said.
“I think it’s great for all the businesses here, actually,” Fisher said. “You want to be on Forest Drive because you want to be seen, you want easy access to your business. So I think it’s super.”
Even with the benefits of higher traffic numbers, Greenwood said making sure places are still easily accessible is a high priority during the negotiation and planning process of new developments.
“With any new development, we always take traffic as a consideration because (of) our citizenry, it’s one of the first things they think about as well,” he said.
Forest Acres sees future development, including the proposals for redevelopment of the Richland Mall site, to be opportunities to implement new ideas for traffic mitigation, he said.
The long-struggling mall property was sold to a developer in January 2023. Plans for the $100 million, ten year redevelopment include the demolition of the current mall and construction of retail property, more than 500 apartments and a six-acre park.
The success of other mixed-use developments in the area, including Cardinal Crossing and Trenholm Plaza, were cited in the City of Forest Acres’s announcement of the mall sale.
Traffic will be one of the things taken into consideration during the planning and approval process of the mall redevelopment, Greenwood said. He said he is confident there will be a traffic study done for the project like the one for Cardinal Crossing. The city does not expect traffic to increase, because the amount of retail space at the site will decrease from 931,000 square feet to around 215,000, the city said in the sale announcement.
Some local business owners, including Hall and Fisher, said they are excited for new businesses and foot traffic to come to the area with the mall redevelopment, even with the already high traffic numbers on Forest Drive.
“It’s progress and you can’t stop progress,” Fisher said. “You just have to learn to deal with it.”