Hilton Head study: Sea Pines Circle really is as slow as you think it is

New traffic-pattern data for Hilton Head Island confirm what drivers there already know: The Sea Pines Circle can be painfully slow.

It now takes cars up to three minutes on average to travel through the circle during the busiest afternoon hours of the town's summer tourism season. That's according to the town's new 2015 annual traffic report that was just released.

The three-minute average exceeds the town's maximum allowed 2.5 minute total average delays, the report finds.

The circle, located at the heart of the island's south-end, isn't the only intersection failing to meet the town's traffic efficiency benchmarks. The same is true of the Squire Pope Road and William Hilton Parkway intersection.

Often, delays at the Sea Pines Circle are much longer than those averages, particularly along Greenwood Drive and William Hilton Parkway, the report found.

Despite the perception, though, traffic through the circle is not as high or as slow as it has been in the past, said town traffic engineer Darrin Shoemaker on Thursday.

"Are conditions at the circle worse now than they were in 2005?" Shoemaker said of the findings. "My answer would be an emphatic no."

But the new data, which Shoemaker will present to the Planning Commission next week, requires the town to take action to mitigate delays through the important hub, Shoemaker said.

That will be one of the main tasks of the town's Circle to Circle Committee this spring, its chairman Jim Gant has said. The year-old group is working to hire an urban planner to help design traffic and development improvements for the entire south-end corridor from Palmetto Bay Road to Coligny and intends to present recommendations for changes as soon as this summer.

The group has floated ideas about a connector road between Palmetto Bay Road and Greenwood Drive through the Publix parking lot there and a series of driveway changes along the area to alleviate traffic problems in the near term, Shoemaker and Gant have said. It has not yet settled on any formal proposals, Gant has said.

Some cheap, quick projects could help immediately, though, Shoemaker suggested.

His report will ask the town to enlarge or add signs directing traffic to alternate routes around the circle, such as Dunnagan's Alley or New Orleans Road. New pavement markings could also help eliminate that "irritating little problem we have of people driving all the way down to the circle and putting on their left turn signal on," Shoemaker chuckled.

More than $1 million in improvements to Office Park Road's intersections with New Orleans Road and Greenwood Drive -- part of the planned University of South Carolina Beaufort campus project -- will also help ease some congestion, Shoemaker added.

"I didn't want to try to steal any of (the committee's) thunder or step on their toes, as figures of speeches go, by trying to work up a big, elaborate analysis," Shoemaker said. "I basically felt that effort is already being undertaken, and I purposely tried to adopt a parallel track to say, 'These are things we can do immediately.'"

But there is only so much the town can build or do for that area without ruining the south end, said Karl Engelman, a Sea Pines resident who has emerged as the most vocal critic of traffic issues.

"'You can get no worser,' as my kids you used to say," Engelman chided. "You can't solve every problem, and they're not owning up to that. There's a finite limit of what you can do ... There is not a tenable solution to that."

Engelman has argued the town must stop its plans to help fund the new university campus in the area because it will only make the traffic situation worse. Even then, there is little the town can reasonably expect of possible traffic solutions, he said.

"In medicine, there are some patients you cure and some you can only help," he said.

Follow reporter Zach Murdock at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and at facebook.com/IPBGZach.

Related content:

• Hilton Head USCB campus secures another approval, Dec. 22, 2015
• Hilton Head Island Mayor David Bennett still adjusting as he finishes his first year in office, Dec. 19, 2015
• Sea Pines residents seek closer study of circle's traffic, March 11, 2015

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Hilton Head study: Sea Pines Circle really is as slow as you think it is."