Midlands officials want to add a new interstate exit to help with traffic. Here’s where
Lexington County officials want to address traffic concerns along a busy stretch of interstate, with the possibility of adding an interstate exit just past the Red Bank area.
The county is set to drop just shy of $1 million to get the project – which could add an exit off of Interstate 20 at Calks Ferry Road in Lexington – off the ground after the county council voted unanimously to approve an engineering contract at a March 11 meeting.
Proposed plans for the added interchange are still in the earliest stages. Before orange cones go up and workers start pouring concrete or asphalt, the county will spend $995,000 on the engineering consulting, which includes a traffic study and designs, for the changes. The county is required to complete a traffic analysis and create an Interchange Justification Report for the Federal Highway Administration before actual work can start.
“This is the initial piece of putting an interchange on Calks Ferry,” Brent Hyatt, director of public works in Lexington, told council members.
The move comes after state legislators set aside $1 million for the project in last fiscal year’s budget. County council member Darrell Hudson said during the March 11 meeting that Lexington County had been trying to get the project off the ground for eight years.
The proposed interchange addition sits just outside Red Bank, a growing area of the county that’s added around 2,500 people to its population in the last decade. While daily traffic counts aren’t available for the area where the interchange would go, Interstate 20 from the Longs Pond Road exit, just up the road, to S.C. 6 saw an average of 48,400 cars a day in 2023, according to state Department of Transportation data.
