What should Lexington County roads look like? Your input could decide
What do you want Lexington County’s roadways to look like?
That’s the question county officials are asking at a series of open houses to discuss the county’s transportation plan. What that plan ends up being will depend on the feedback they receive from the public, said the project manager for the county.
Residents filed through a meeting room at the county administration building on Lexington’s West Main Street on Wednesday to view charts of data about Lexington County’s current traffic conditions. It was one of several open houses the county is holding to allow residents to give their feedback on the county’s road needs, whether through a survey, an interactive map online, or via sticky notes they could put onto the poster board.
“There will be two sets of these,” said manager David Beaty with the engineering firm Stantec. “This one will exhibit traffic conditions, crash summaries, whatever’s important to them. So we’re listening to the public.
“Then we’ll come back later this summer with ‘2050’ conditions” — meaning projected updates to the county’s traffic patterns, population and road conditions — “and what type of improvements the public wants.”
After that second round of gathering feedback this fall Stantec will take all the feedback and data to Lexington County Council with different options for moving forward and what each of them might cost.
But what they won’t do is make a formal proposal on what the county should do, Beaty said, and the company won’t consider any funding sources for the option. Lexington County is currently considering a penny sales tax to fund road improvements in the county, which would need to gain the support of a majority of voters in a referendum.
This would be the third attempt to get approval of a penny tax in a decade and a half, and the county council pushed back any penny tax vote until 2027 in order to gather all the data for a transportation plan this year. Then voters will be presented with a list of road projects to vote to fund.
“Main Street is the challenge,” said Suzanne Whyte, who lives near downtown Lexington. “A hotel is being built where so many people are going to get in their cars on Main Street and probably go to Columbia.”
She doesn’t think the county has done enough to keep up with growth. In the last two decades, Lexington County has added 100,000 new residents, creating heartache about the increased traffic that’s come along with them.
Whyte wants to see more bike and walking trails around town as well as an extension of the COMET bus system deeper into Lexington, all geared toward giving people more options to avoid putting another car on the road.
Brett McLaughlin moved to the fast-growing Red Bank area only two years ago and has already seen additional development like the Platt Springs Crossing shopping area pull more traffic into the area. He’d also like to see more infrastructure to support biking and walking safely in areas where traffic can get congested.
“If you’re 23 like me, you could ride your bike two miles to go to the Circle K without getting hit by somebody going 50,” McLaughlin said.
He said he appreciated the level of engagement and public input that the county is looking for in drawing up any improvement plan, and he input several suggestions at the open house’s interactive map station.
“It makes me feel like they’re actually taking us seriously,” he said.
The next planned open house on the county transportation plan will at the Live Oak Center in Seven Oaks Park on Monday, followed by one in the Batesburg-Leesville High School gymnasium on Wednesday. A planned open house at Brookland-Cayce High School that was canceled this week due to weather will also be rescheduled at a later date.
All of the open houses start at 5 p.m. and will be open to the public for about two hours.
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