City, county to look at traffic on busy Sea Island Parkway

Something will have to change to accommodate more cars on Sea Island Parkway — that much seems clear.

A new Walmart is going up, a Harris Teeter is planned for a major intersection and a fast-food restaurant wants to build on the Lady’s Island thoroughfare. Residents are concerned about increased traffic, and traffic forecasts showed the current road will fail.

So the city will look at how cars will flow on Sea Island Parkway from the Richard V. Woods Memorial Bridge to Chowan Creek Bridge. Engineering firm Ward Edwards will review land-use plans and existing traffic studies and will collect new vehicle counts using a subcontractor.

“There have been a lot of little studies, but nobody looked at the big picture,” Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling said this week. “Walmart did a study; Harris Teeter would have to do a study — everybody has to do a study, but the study is their impact, not the collective impact.

“This is to try and look at the big picture and try and tie them all together.”

The estimated $87,000 project could be paid from Walmart’s impact fees, pending approval from Beaufort County Council’s finance committee. The county would receive the remaining money from the fees, about $100,000.

Officials from the city of Beaufort, Beaufort County and S.C. Department of Transportation developed a plan for the work in recent months. Recommendations for possible road improvements will be presented to the Northern Beaufort County Regional Plan Implementation Committee.

Concerns were brought late last year from Lost Island Road residents who said entering and leaving the road would become more dangerous when a proposed Taco Bell opens on the corner and the new Walmart opens.

The residents asked state Rep. Shannon Erickson to bring SCDOT to the discussion. The agency joined a group including the city and county to form a plan in recent months.

“I believe we’re moving in a reasonable, sound fashion,” Erickson told the City Council on Tuesday.

Residents who formed a watchdog group to follow development issues along the corridor are calling for development to be halted from the new Walmart to Chowan Creek bridge.

The move would allow the area to maintain its character and provide an appropriate transition to more rural St. Helena Island, said Chuck Newton, a Dataw Island resident and member of the Sea Island Corridor Coalition.

“More importantly, action to preserve existing zoning and deferring additional commercial development in this area until such time as the roads, schools and stormwater management infrastructure needed to support it was in place would signal that the city was, indeed, taking a responsible view of the needs of Lady’s Island and its residents, and those who travel across it,” Newton said in prepared remarks to the City Council.

This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 9:40 AM with the headline "City, county to look at traffic on busy Sea Island Parkway."