S.C. Launches 274 Paving Projects Using Gas Tax

Sunday, August 6, 2017

One month after gasoline taxes increased 2 cents a gallon across the Palmetto State to pay for road improvements, the S.C. Department of Transportation has announced a new round of  projects, including one in Lancaster County.
The list includes 247 paving projects totaling 260 miles across 30 counties. One road in Lancaster County, Rowland Avenue in Heath Springs, will be resurfaced. It's about a mile long and connects South Main Street to Kershaw Camden Highway.
Sen. Greg Gregory (R-16) has been pushing hard for local and state road improvements for several years, and he’s pleased with the progress so far.
"Lancaster County is leading the state overall with the number of miles of roads resurfaced because of the funds from multiple sources – local, state and federal," Gregory said Thursday.
Those sources are the local-option sales tax, surplus funds sent from the state to the county and money from this spring’s Roads Bill. Gregory said the county resurfaced about 100 miles last year.
"People are starting to see progress on the roads now," he said. "There is still a long way to go, with probably about 600 miles of state roads in the county that need resurfacing. But we have gone from resurfacing about 5 miles of road each year to 100 miles the last year. It's a quantum leap."
Gregory said the top priority in the state was to formulate a plan that would maintain existing roads and expand them in fast-growing areas such as Indian Land and Fort Mill.
"I have been pushing for a plan that would do both, and I think we succeeded largely in that over the last couple years with both the local-option sales tax here in Lancaster and then the Roads Bill that we passed this spring to adequately fund the roads."
The Roads Bill’s gas-tax hike started taking effect effect July 1 with a 2-cents-per-gallon increase. The tax will increase by another 2 cents per gallon every year through 2022.
State Transportation Secretary Christy Hall said in a release that the projects were made possible by the increased road funding from the General Assembly.
“Without the passage of the Roads Bill and infusion of funding to the local County Transportation Committees, DOT would not have been able to proceed with advancing these projects to construction,” Hall said.
Nine other Lancaster County roads, totaling nearly 8 miles, were already scheduled to be  resurfaced and improved in early 2018. SCDOT District 4 engineer John McCarter said the funding for these roads comes from the agency’s normal reconstruction and rehab fund.
That list includes Powell Avenue, Jonathan Lane, Old Lynwood Circle, Florence Circle, Lynwood Circle Road, McManus Lane, Hoke Road, 10th Street/Converse Street, and Sunshine Road.
SCDOT chose these nine roads first because they are not eligible for federal aid. Such roads are typically rural and in the worst condition, Gregory said.
He said the next priority after addressing urgent paving and resurfacing needs will be safety issues, in particular S.C. 9 and U.S. 521.
County Administrator Steve Willis expressed his appreciation to the local delegation who pushed hard on this issue.
McCarter also recognized that support.
"We have a long way to go, but the action taken by the legislature is going to get us digging out of this hole that we have gotten into over the last 30 years," he said. "Sen. Gregory was definitely a leader in the effort to fund fixing our roads."

Follow Reporter Mandy Catoe on Twitter @MandyCatoeTLN or contact her at (803) 283-1152.