Single road-repair list impractical, SC roads chief says
A single statewide list of all road and bridge projects is not practical, Transportation Department head Christy Hall said Thursday.
To make the point, state roads officials unveiled a list of all road and bridge projects on a 55-foot-long roll of paper, containing 1,530 road- and bridge-repair projects.
Some would be paid for with federal money. Others with state money. Others with local money. Others with a mix.
“The way our funding is set up, it’s impractical to have a singular, ranked statewide list,” said Hall.
Under the hypothetical list, fixing Columbia’s Malfunction Junction – the area including the intersection of Interstates 20 and 26 – tied with four other projects as the state’s No. 1 priority.
An S.C. Legislative Audit Council report released earlier this week found the Transportation Department has at least 157 separate priority lists for projects in 15 categories.
For example, resurfacing projects make up a category with 92 lists. First, resurfacing projects are broken down by each of the state’s 46 counties. Then, each county has two separate lists — one for projects eligible for federal money and another for projects that are not.
“The benefit of a single priority list is that the highest-ranked projects from a statewide perspective are more likely to be funded than lower-ranked priority projects,” the Audit Council report said.
In addition, the report said the Transportation Department’s priority system is not transparent. For example, not all priority lists were on the agency’s website, the report said.
But a single list is not practical since the agency still would have to group projects based on their funding, Hall said.
Going forward the agency can do a better job of explaining its prioritization process, Hall said. In addition, the agency can develop a plan showing projects scheduled for the next year or two.
Cassie Cope: 803-771-8657, @cassielcope
This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Single road-repair list impractical, SC roads chief says."