Sea Pines residents seek closer study of circle's traffic
Some homeowners in Sea Pines are calling on a new town committee to take a closer look at the planned University of South Carolina Beaufort campus near the community's gates before it considers south-island traffic improvements.
"Otherwise you're going to end up with something that's been completed, and you're going to have to figure out how to make it work," Sea Pines resident and former Town Councilwoman Kate Keep told the group Wednesday.
The town's new Circle to Circle Committee is studying traffic and redevelopment on the south end between the Sea Pines and Coligny traffic circles. At its second meeting in as many weeks, the committee discussed previous reviews of the Sea Pines circle and how to go about planning improvements in the area.
First, though, the committee should carefully consider what specific effects a new USCB hospitality management campus on Office Park Road would have on the island's busiest traffic circle, said Keep and several other Sea Pines and south-end residents.
Town officials and consultant SRS Engineering have studied the campus' impacts on Office Park Road and determined increased traffic there would require the town to spend more than $1 million to realign and expand the road's intersection with Pope Avenue. Improvements at Greenwood Drive near the Sea Pines front gate would also be needed. In an agreement signed this month, the town has committed to those improvements and up to another $22 million to help build the campus.
But the SRS Engineering study doesn't aptly consider those extra trips' effect on the circle itself, which would have to handle most, if not all, of those cars before and after classes each weekday, the residents said.
"Put the two together, Pope Avenue and Sea Pines Circle, and what you have is a cul-de-sac de sac," said Joe Kernan, who represents Sea Pines' Community Services Associates on the committee. "If you can't solve the problem, you have to start managing it."
The additional traffic on the circle would need to be addressed this summer in the annual townwide traffic study, said Jim Gant, a town Planning Commission member and leader of the committee.
In June, the town will update traffic data for the Sea Pines circle, which is reviewed every five years, town traffic engineer Darrin Shoemaker said. The town has also added the intersection of Greenwood Drive and Office Park Road to this summer's study, he said.
With that study's updated traffic data, SRS Engineering principal Todd Salvagin will compile a model that can better explain the traffic impact on the entire Circle to Circle corridor. That model will predict traffic based on projections for growth and redevelopment, such as the USCB campus, he said.
At a meeting to be scheduled for next week, the committee will focus on the Coligny side of the corridor, Gant said. Throughout the spring it will collect ideas about redevelopment at public hearings.
"We're a long way from solution mode," Gant said.
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Related content:
- New 'Circle to Circle' committee to study Sea Pines to Coligny corridor , Feb. 6, 2015
- USCB, Hilton Head Island strike formal deal for hospitality campus on Office Park Road , March 3, 2015
This story was originally published March 11, 2015 at 8:24 PM with the headline "Sea Pines residents seek closer study of circle's traffic."