Free Republic

The entire $1.7 billion Carolina Crossroads project is broken down into five phases. The plan is to provide a safer, more modern interchange design for the state’s top interstate “pinch point,” commonly known as “Malfunction Junction” in the Midlands of South Carolina. More than 134,000 vehicles including commuters, freight carriers and other travelers pass through this area on a daily basis. Phase I of the Carolina Crossroads project will center on the reconfiguration of the Colonial Life Boulevard interchange on I-126. Some improvements will be made to improve traffic flow along I-26 heading in the direction U.S. 378. This project...

Nothing says “welcome to the third world” quite like entering Jasper County, South Carolina on Interstate 95. Traveling from Georgia, the highway narrows from six lanes to four lanes – with rusty guardrails flanking the roadside. Trash is everywhere, greeting visiting motorists as they pass through a 1990s-era stucco display that might as well be the entrance to a drug kingpin’s barn – or a trailer park. Which … is fitting. Traffic grinds to a slow crawl, then proceeds in stop-and-go fashion for the next fifty miles. Worst of all is the pavement – which resembles an Afghan airstrip following...

AGENCY LOBBYING HARD FOR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE South Carolina’s corrupt transportation “leaders” still desperately want to foist Interstate 73 on dirt poor Palmetto State taxpayers … even as government’s embarrassing inability to do basic maintenance continues to be on display all over the state.How desperate are our powerful “roads czars” to get this Interstate built? Let’s recap …First, they’ve spent more than $100 million on an interchange for the highway (even though it’s not clear if it will ever be built).Next they’ve proposed spending millions more on wetlands mitigation related to the road (again, even though it’s not clear if...

Most folks probably think of the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank as just that – a bank that finances major highway and bridge projects. S.C. Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston and a member of the Infrastructure Bank (STIB) Board of Directors, described the bank, created by the Legislature in 1997, as a “funding arm” in a recent (Charleston) Post & Courier story. But in addition to providing funding to the state Department of Transportation and local governments, STIB in recent years also has assumed the role of a general contractor or project manager, paying millions of dollars directly to certain companies for...

Charleston, SC - It's still unclear when the new Cooper River Bridge in Charleston will open. Officials are having difficulty getting the 632 million dollar bridge paved. It takes just the right combination of temperature, humidity and wind to allow workers to put a two-inch concrete roadway layer over the 15-hundred-46-foot main span of the bridge linking Charleston and Mount Pleasant. Project manager Charles Dwyer with the Transportation Department says some days they get the right temperature and wind, but the humidity is too low. Only about one-third of the main span has been paved so far.