Tired of sitting in traffic on Lexington’s Main St? New project aims to fix that
Along the busy two-lane road that leads into downtown Lexington, the town is considering adding a turn lane to one heavily trafficked intersection that routinely slows traffic on one of the main roads that connect the downtown area to the interstate.
The town is set to spend just shy of $2 million on improvements to the intersection that connects U.S. 1/East Main Street, Harmon Street and Martel Drive. The project would add an additional right turn lane and upgrade the existing intersection.
The intersection improvements connect to the parking lot for the Old Mill Pond Trail. The move comes a little over a year after the town opened the trail, almost a decade after historic flooding in 2015 caused the dam on the pond to fail, pushing back longtime plans. It also comes as work is currently taking place to pave the gravel parking lot of Hazelwood Brewing, which sits along the trail.
“I feel like this traffic project needs to be done and it’s been on the books since I believe 2015. I think that it’s time that it moves forward. Especially with the trail there and all the traffic that’s bringing to the trail.” Mayor Hazel Livingston said.
The stretch of U.S. 1/East Main Street from Interstate 20 to North Lake Drive saw more than 27,000 cars daily in 2024, according to state Department of Transportation data. Two miles off I-20, cars carrying commuters and those headed to Main Street businesses, alike, funnel from four lanes into two as Main Street approaches. Google maps shows cars backed up along the road in a 2023 street-view capture.
Traffic has been a consistent issue in Lexington County, as the population has boomed in recent decades and older infrastructure has been unable to keep up with the demands. Roadway improvement projects are expensive, tedious and time consuming.
But as the Old Mill Pond’s popularity has grown, with a handful of popular restaurants and breweries like Hazelwood and Old Mill Brewpub and the new walking trail, local leaders hope that roadway improvements will bring at least some relief to the congestion in the area.
“You go over any given day and the parking lots there are packed. People are enjoying the restaurants, the trail and it has quickly become a really, really busy intersection,” Town Councilman Gavin Smith told The State. “And when you pair that with how confusing the current layout of that intersection is, this is a win for our citizens. It realigns that intersection so that it’s easy to get in and out of the Old Mill, as it continues to grow in popularity.”
The town council, during a work session Monday night, moved to take a vote on the updated engineering contract at its next council meeting. If approved, the project could take more than two years to complete. It’s likely that the start of construction is at least a year out, Town Administrator Rachelle Gleaton told council members.
Designing the roadway and improvements will take around half a year. Right-of-way acquisition, which is the process that local governments use to get access to private land for the purposes of building public infrastructure like roads, will take a year and the town has allocated 10 months for construction of the project.
