Mr. Mayor – Keep Your Promise

The TWG* urged Town officials last November to let the traffic consultants explore all options to fix the 278 corridor traffic congestion and safety issues without political interference. 
 
And Mayor Perry said recently that it was critical to preserve the character of our island and we would “leave no stone unturned to find the best solutions for traffic improvements while respecting the Gullah communities at the island’s entrance”. 

Unfortunately, none of this is happening. 

Recall that that the Town’s Independent Study began partly as a result of more than 10,000 citizens signing our petition that the route 278 Corridor plan being pushed on us by SCDOT and the County had fatal flaws including:

·       Too much attention on an oversized bridge, and not enough on our 2 (now 3) traffic lights which are the real cause of our congestion problems. 

·       An SCDOT solution that now costs $425 million yet only saves 109 second in one direction and 276 seconds in the other.

·       An SCDOT solution that produces a huge 11-lane 124’ wide bridge and 2 huge new ugly intersections on Hilton Head.

·       An attempt to get federal approval with an Environmental Assessment (EA) containing errors, misstatements and oversights.

·       A County process which was non-transparent and ignored and over-rode inputs from the citizens of Hilton Head, including the Gullah-Geechee community.

But the same kind of problems have begun to plague the Town’s study. 

·       The mayor picked the Corridor oversight committee, and now dominates all meetings.

·       Citizen inputs are ignored. The same questions come up at each meeting and are never answered. It is as if everyone has been instructed to ignore citizen questions.

·       The Corridor Committee (dominated by the mayor) is making many on-the-fly decisions without adequate backup data. 

·       There are large unexplained variations between the consultant’s results and previous study results.

·       Options that may be better, cheaper, with less community impact that have been suggested by our TWG, and would be less harsh on the Gullah-Geechee community, such as a Horizontal Bypass to the Cross Island Parkway have been ignored.

We do not want a bad Corridor Plan because of inattention to data, bad assumptions or incomplete analyses. A collaborative study with citizens would have prevented that, but this one is close to 100% run by the mayor and Town Staff.

The Town must provide its Municipal Consent to approve the parts of the plan on Hilton Head. The mayor seems to be navigating to run the clock out and push for that Consent because time is running out or because of a threat of loss of State funds. That would be a huge mistake. After over 4 years of delay caused by the County, rushing now to approve a bad plan would be a disaster for our Town.

The town’s decision will be one of the most consequential decisions in years and will impact our island for decades to come. 

Mr. Mayor – Keep Your Promise. Leave no Stone Unturned. 

Sincerely, The TWG

*The Technical Working Group (TWG) consists of engineers, financial people and a naval officer who have been studying the Corridor problem for years. We have analyzed vast amounts of data and past reports – something the Corridor Committee does not have the time to do. Our goal is to ensure that no stone is left unturned to provide the best data driven (vs politically driven) solution to our Corridor problem. We are responsible for the over 10,750 person petition seeking a better Corridor solution for the people of Hilton Head and Beaufort County.

You can sign the petition by clicking here    https://chng.it/JDPPBxzZXZ