When will Hilton Head know the plan for its US 278 bridges? Timeline delayed again
Hilton Head Islanders waiting to find out the fate of the island’s single entry and exit point will have to wait longer.
Town leaders said Friday that the preferred alternative — the final plan from the S.C. Department of Transportation — will be announced in May.
That’s a significant departure from the project’s original timeline, when the public was supposed to see the plan in fall 2020. That date was then delayed to winter, and then March 2021.
The U.S. 278 bridge project is the largest infrastructure project on the island in the past decade, and it will cost local and state taxpayers around $300 million.
It’s important because the bridge crosses through a historic Gullah Geechee community, regularly has traffic back-ups and accidents, and represents an entrance to the island that leaders have long wanted to rework.
But everyone, town leaders included, is at the mercy of the state engineers at SCDOT, who are studying the environmental issues as they design the project. Once the preferred alternative is announced, the public will have a chance to comment and town and county governments will need to vote on the plan.
It’s a subject of disagreement among the community because Hilton Head residents and, to an extent their leaders, want to be more involved. Last year, town and county leaders approved an independent engineering review of all SCDOT’s potential plans for the corridor.
Residents hope the independent review will result in other ideas for the corridor that haven’t been included in the nine working alternatives publicized, then changed, by SCDOT in 2019.
Hilton Head planners are also working with local land-planning firms to complete a charrette, or period of intense land planning, around the historic Stoney community at the base of the bridge. The community has dozens of residents, and local businesses will be threatened if extra lanes are added to the highway. Already, U.S. 278 runs within 50 feet of their front doors.
The land use plan will be passed from town planners to a land planning firm following the February charrette, Interim Town Manager Josh Gruber said Friday.
Gruber didn’t give a specific reason for the delay in releasing the preferred alternative for the highway. Council members expressed their concerns with the timeline and planning.
“It’s taken them a lot more time than they said. First it was November, no later than December. Now it’s the spring maybe even early summer,” Ward 6 representative Glenn Stanford said. “It’s time to let DOT know we will decide, but we need a timeframe.”
Others said the land-planning effort is crucial to treating island residents equitably.
“This is a situation where a public infrastructure is greatly impacting their quality of life,” Ames said of the Stoney community. “This project is much more than the two dimensional land.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 11:45 AM.
