After hours-long bowl game bottlenecks, will SC finally fix its stretch of I-95?
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A parking lot. A “painful stop and go.”
University of South Carolina and Clemson University football fans shared equal frustration last month as both headed down Interstate 95 toward their respective bowl games in Jacksonville and Miami and were caught by the congested, bottlenecked highway.
“I-95 is definitely a parking lot!,” tweeted Gamecock fan Robin Ghent. “Painful stop and go. We are ready to get to Jacksonville and cheer on our Gamecocks.”
It got the attention of Gamecocks football coach Shane Beamer — and even state lawmakers.
“Obviously, people coming to a complete stop on 95 trying to go to a football game is not acceptable,” state Rep. Bruce Bannister, a Greenville Republican who chairs the House’s budget-writing committee, told reporters Jan. 9.
The state knows the interstate is a problem. In fact, the S.C. Department of Transportation says it has had plans to widen interstates 95 and 26 since 2018.
“The I-95 corridor does already meet the traffic volume requirements, outside of any peak travel periods, to qualify for widening to six lanes, and those plans are underway,” said Kelly Moore, spokeswoman for SCDOT.
Interstate 26, however, is the priority, officials have said. That’s why I-95 is still waiting for its fix.
Traffic is an issue on both interstates, the transportation agency said. It’s a particular problem, they added, on I-26 between Charleston and Columbia, and the first 33 miles on I-95 from the Georgia border to Point South, where U.S. 17 branches off heading toward Charleston.
Transportation officials say the eventual I-95 expansion will be divided into three segments, with the entire project underway by 2028. That’s three years earlier than originally planned, thanks to an influx of federal COVID-19 relief money, dispersed by the General Assembly last year.
The first segment of the project — 8 miles from the Georgia border to Hardeeville — is scheduled to begin by the end of next year, while construction on the second and third segments will start by 2028. The engineering and design of the job has already begun.
Still, SCDOT estimates that the entire expansion won’t be completed until the early 2030s.
In the meantime, on Wednesday, S.C. Secretary of Transportation Christy Hall told a panel of House budget writers that her agency is also planning to widen I-95 from the North Carolina border to Highway 327. Those plans, however, are contingent on approval from the SCDOT commission that Hall said she expected by the end of the week.
A longstanding issue
Improving I-95 has long been a topic the General Assembly has had its sights on, with some legislators saying the expansion is long overdue.
“We underfunded our road network for the last three decades,” said Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Berkeley, who heads the Senate Transportation Committee. “I would love to go faster (with the project), and so would the DOT, but that’s really a function of the General Assembly.”
Earlier last year, legislators earmarked nearly $600 million in federal American Rescue Plan dollars to accelerate expansion projects for interstates 26 and 95. The additional money has moved the project up by three years.
Grooms added that he was very happy with the accelerated money passed on to DOT and hopes that even more money is spent this year.
“This year, we’re looking at $3.5 billion in unobligated funds,” he said, referring to a pot of money budget writers have to decide how to spend. “I’d love to see $1 billion go to roads, but I’m not going to get my wish. But if I had my wish, we would’ve had those lanes constructed by now.”
The I-95 project is estimated to cost $360 million to complete over six years. Had the project been spread out over 13 years as initially planned, officials were looking at a $1.3 billion price tag.
“With the support and continued investment of Gov. Henry McMaster and the General Assembly, SCDOT has been able to accelerate our priority projects along critical interstate corridors, including I-95,” Kelly said.
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
