4 lanes proposed for Sea Island Parkway. Properties to be acquired ‘will be significant’

Beaufort County is drawing up plans to expand a congested and dangerous stretch of Sea Island Parkway to four lanes with a landscaped median and pathways it says are designed to improve traffic, particularly around Beaufort High School.

A group that monitors development in the Sea Islands called the decision shortsighted.

If approved, the Parkway between Woods Memorial Bridge in Beaufort to its intersection with Sams Point Road/Lady’s Island Drive would be expanded to four lanes, two lanes in each direction, with improved turn lanes.

Currently, there are two lanes of traffic with a center left turn lane.

The four-lane project was approved by the County Council’s Public Facilities Committee on Tuesday. The plans will be presented Sept. 12 to the full County Council, which has the final say on whether the option will proceed.

While the alternative was chosen because it limits environmental and neighborhood impacts around Beaufort High School, the county says, the project will impact homes and businesses along Sea Island Parkway.

The county, spokesman Chris Ophardt said, will have to acquire properties for the widening project. The exact number is not known at this point, Ophardt said, “but it will be significant.”

Over the next month, a draft proposal will be developed that will include costs and impacts to businesses and residences.

Funds from the 2018 penny sales tax referendum will pay for the work.

A 2017 Lady’s Island Corridor Study showed a higher higher rate of rear-end collisions in the area, due to the stop-and-go congestion. The second most frequent type of collision, the study said, involved vehicles turning onto the high-volume roads from driveways and intersections without signals.

Jared Fralix, assistant county administrator for infrastructure, said expanding Sea Island Parkway to four lanes will reduce traffic jams, create a scenic entryway to Lady’s Island from the Woods Memorial Bridge in Beaufort and make it easier to walk in the neighborhoods.

The sales tax for infrastructure work expired this year after raising $120 million: $80 million to help overhaul the bridges leading to Hilton Head Island, $30 million for the Lady’s Island corridor improvements and $10 million to improve county sidewalks and paths.

Chuck Newton, chair of the Sea Island Corridor Coalition and a member of the Ladys Island Plan steering committee, called widening the road shortsighted because he says it won’t reduce traffic.

The $30 million in new taxes approved in the referendum earmarked for Lady’s Island projects was supposed to fund work that improves the traffic situation, Newton said, and, “This is not what voters expected money to be spent on.”

He noted that County Council members approved the Lady’s Island Plan, which has a primary goal of getting traffic off of Sea Island Parkway, not adding to it.

“A central objective was to nudge this section of Lady’s Island toward being a more walkable, pedestrian-oriented neighborhood,” Newton said.

The Sea Island Parkway is the second of nine road improvement projects in Lady’s Island corridor identified in the 2018 referendum.

The project is critical, Ophardt said, because it directly affects the other seven road projects and a few pathway projects.

“Until we figure out how this project shakes out,” Ophardt said, “we are on hold with those.”

The first project was a right hand turn lane on Sams Point Road onto Sea Island Parkway, which was completed earlier this year.

Work to improve the safety and flow of access in and out of Beaufort High School, which is part of the route, is driving the Sea Island Parkway project, Ophardt said.

The county initially considered several other options to realign the access to the high school. They involved changing the entrance and improved or new neighborhood roads to improve traffic flow. But neighbors, Ophardt said, objected because those options required using some land in Crystal Lake Park.

Instead, to improve traffic flow in the vicinity near the high school, the county chose the four-lane Sea Island Parkway option. The work would include improved left- and right-hand turns onto Geechie Road, the main entrance into the high school, and the next intersection, State Road S-7-266, near the Circle K convenience store.

“This would help alleviate the traffic caused by Beaufort high school,” Ophardt said.

The cost of the initial Beaufort High School access improvement was $7 million. That cost, Ophardt said, will obviously rise as a result of the change to the four-lane option.

This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 4:55 AM.