You could bike to Hilton Head on future bridge, DOT says. What would path look like?
There’s one aspect of the $290 million plan to replace Hilton Head Island’s existing bridges that everyone seems to agree on.
The S.C. Department of Transportation, town-hired land planning firm MKSK, and Coastal Conservation League all support a new multi-use trail for runners and bicyclists along the proposed six-lane bridge.
There’s just some disagreement over the details.
SCDOT officials want to build a 10-foot-wide path for use along the southern edge of the new U.S. 278 bridge, which would run from Bluffton to Jenkins Island.
The path would eventually loop beneath the six-lane bridge at the entrance to Jenkins Island and cut east along the highway’s northern edge. There would be a five-foot-wide sidewalk bordering U.S. 278 to the south on the island.
But MKSK, a Greenville-based land planning firm that the town hired for $98,660 this past spring, has countered the SCDOT with its own ideas.
Brian Kinzelman, a senior principal at MKSK, laid out the firm’s position during a Town Council meeting in late June.
“For pedestrians and bicyclists going hither to yon over a mile and a half of structure, there needs to be a little bit more comfort, a little bit more separation from automobile traffic,” Kinzelman said.
(SCDOT’s favored U.S. 278 construction plan had not been released to the public when Kinzelman spoke to Town Council members, but his presentation assumed that SCDOT would recommend a 10-foot-wide path and a single, six-lane bridge.)
MKSK has suggested a wider path along the bridge, though Kinzelman in late June did not provide exact measurements for that proposal. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The state could broaden the deck used to support the path, Kinzelman said, or reduce the width of lanes on the highway. (He recommended 11-foot lanes in the historic Stoney community on Hilton Head.)
A more-transparent guardrail for the path, along with benches for people to sit above Skull Creek on the bridge, would also be good additions to the project, Kinzelman said.
There could be “opportunities to stop and take in the Skull Creek vista to the south, which is magnificent,” he said. “We should utilize that as the island asset that it is.”
MKSK is also interested in a different pathway configuration for Jenkins Island.
Kinzelman suggested that the multi-use trail continue east along U.S. 278’s southern edge on Jenkins Island and split off under the six-lane bridge to connect with another, new trail running adjacent to a proposed access road north of U.S. 278 on Jenkins Island. That access road, which is also called a backage road, would cross over to Hog Island.
SCDOT’s plan has only a sidewalk to the south of U.S. 278 on Jenkins Island, project documents show.
Jessie White, the south coast office director of the Coastal Conservation League, in a Friday interview added that she was glad SCDOT included a multi-use trail in its favored U.S. 278 plan, which was released Wednesday.
The organization was also grateful, she said, that state officials selected a proposed highway route that would impact fewer wetland acres than other rejected SCDOT proposals.
“There’s still room for improvement,” though, White said.
“We continue to believe that the more (SCDOT) can slow down their end of the process, and allow for MKSK’s work to continue, and for those things to be folded in together and complement one another, the better.”
What’s next?
The debate over the running and cycling path’s details will surely go down as one of the smaller U.S. 278 arguments this summer.
But it already shows that relatively minor components of SCDOT’s $290 million bridge plan will face a large amount of public scrutiny in the coming weeks.
The SCDOT’s plan, or “preferred alternative,” is currently in its 45-day public comment period, which ends Aug. 22.
Residents will be able to review the SCDOT documents online, submit written suggestions or recommendations to agency officials, attend an in-person public hearing on July 22 to discuss the preferred alternative, and set up appointments at the Island Recreation Center between July 14 and July 16 or Aug. 18 and Aug. 21 to learn more about the state’s proposal.
The public hearing will be held from 2 to 7 p.m. July 22 at the rec center at 20 Wilborn Road. People can drop by to ask questions from 2 to 6 p.m. An hour-long meeting for residents to speak out about the plan will run from 6 to 7 p.m.
Shawn Colin, senior adviser to Hilton Head’s town manager, expects state officials to ultimately spend two to three months responding to the public’s written comments.
The SCDOT could then release an updated version of its preferred alternative with tweaks or modifications this fall, he has said.
