The proposed County Resolution is possibly illegal, would slow cooperation between Town and County, hurt downstream communities, and further delay a sound plan for the Route 278 Corridor.
Background: The Route 278 Corridor Project, conceived in 2017-18, had a conceptual flaw that was brought to the County’s and SCDOT’s attention, but was ignored: As shown in Figure 1, the Corridor is a complex network where impacts and congestion cures must include efficient interfaces to the Cross Island Parkway (CIP) and local Route 278. Citizens who drove the route noted that the traffic lights and bottlenecks downstream had more impact on congestion than bridge capacity.
In 2020, Citizens once again brought this up and requested an end-end traffic study over paths A-D and A-E in Figure 1. A Statement of Work (SOW) for an outside consultant was produced by a joint County – Citizen team, but over a 4-day period, without adequate public notice or review, that SOW was gutted by the Chair of the Public Facilities Committee (PFC) and the gutted version was ramrodded through the PFC and County Council. This made the 2020 end-end study a useless waste of taxpayer funds and time. (All of this is documented via leaked documents.)
In 2022, with the strong support and help from Senator Tom Davis, and prodding from Citizen groups including close to 9000 petition signers, the needed end-end study was revived, and on August 16, 2022 the Town Council of Hilton Head Island (TOHHI) voted to support it. The Chair of the PFC was in the audience to hear the proceedings. On August 19, 2022 the PFC released its draft Resolution (to be discussed at the PFC on 8/22/22) to partition the project and proceed with only one part, without considering the other parts and the entire system. This appears to be a repeat of the 2020 tactic to once again ramrod a gutted analytic approach to the project through the PFC.
We urge that the proposed County Resolution on the 8/22/2022 PFC Agenda be defeated for the following reasons:
A. As shown in Figure 1, the bridges are an integral part of a complex system that must be studied as a whole, from Moss Creek to efficient interfaces with the Cross Island Parkway (CIP) and local Hilton Head Island (paths A – D and A – E on the map). Without such an end-end view, starting only bridge work and roads to Windmill Harbor (WH) as proposed in the County Resolution, without understanding the downstream interfaces and impacts, may preclude other options or force other sub-optimal actions downstream. Putting on blinders like this helps no one and has the potential of wasting time and money and causing damage to the downstream communities.
B. Beaufort County raised $80 million of taxpayer funds via a 2018 Sales Tax Referendum which indicated the scope of County work to be between Moss Creek and Squire Pope Road. Reducing the scope of work promised in that Referendum opens the door to legal challenges.
C. Instead of speeding up a solution, partitioning the problem as the County now proposes, will delay an optimal solution since, in addition to the many issues with SCDOT’s current plans, a new class of partition-created sub-optimality issues will surface. These will be vigorously brought to the attention of FHWA/NEPA by Citizen groups, now numbering close to 9000 members.
D. Instead of joining a cooperative effort (developed with the help of Senator Davis, and just approved by TOHHI) to rapidly provide end-end quantitative data to find the best Corridor solution, this County Resolution comes across as a Poison the Well strategy by the County. It may after lengthy challenges succeed in building some kind of sub-optimal bridges but would dump unplanned chaotic traffic on downstream communities. It is the direct opposite of a cooperative effort.
Diederik Advocaat
Steven Baer
Joseph Kernan
Richard Wallace
Stephen Woodall
for almost 9000 petition signers.