State of SCDOT Presentation
Last week, SCDOT Secretary Christy Hall gave the Senate Transportation committee a State of the SCDOT briefing. Hall shared with the committee that despite having the largest road inventory in the nation (40,000 lane miles) in the 7th fastest growing state, that “progress is being made and there are orange cones in every county”. Hall shared that more than $1.3 billion of new gas tax funds have been invested in road and bridge work, including $585 million paid to contractors and another $846 million in payments to be made when work is completed.
SCDOT is investing $50 million a year to target rural roads for safety projects because 30 percent of the state's fatalities occur on just 5 percent of their network. Hall said 393 miles of rural road safety projects have been addressed so far, and that number is well ahead of schedule to meet SCDOT's target of 1,000 miles over 10 years. In addition, 114 bridge projects have been addressed with a 10-year target of 465 bridges. Hall also told the committee the pavement quality of the state's most highly traveled roads has improved to 42 percent rated in "good" condition, an increase of 16 percent since 2017.
When pushed on how to address the congestion in the Charleston area, Hall told the committee that congestion is not something they have a fix for. Hall also shared that her department knows that “transit has to be a part of the solution moving forward and they are exploring options for pulling down more federal dollars to address transit”. And, when questioned about I-73 Hall told the committee that SCDOT is “using federal earmarks to acquire ROW, but litigation is slowing that acquisition down”. She also told the committee that it will cost” $1.2 billion to build I-73 and no recently passed gas tax funds will be diverted to build it and tolls are not an option”. Hall’s presentation can be seen here.