An Indian Land road fix will go to court, while a Rock Hill job is delayed, again
A significant road project in Lancaster County is likely headed to court, while a long-awaited one in Rock Hill could serve as a test case for construction delays.
Berry Mattox with the South Carolina Department of Transportation updated the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study policy committee Friday afternoon on several ongoing jobs. One is an intersection improvement planned for U.S. 21 and Marvin Road in Indian Land.
Plans are to improve the traffic signal there and add two new turn lanes onto Marvin. Design work is complete. But SCDOT hasn’t yet been able to get the right-of-way needed for the nearly $3.9 million project.
Mattox said the issued has been tied up in court and SCDOT filed a motion to dismiss a legal case related to the right-of-way acquisition. That motion was denied.
“This is probably going to go to trial,” Mattox said. “I don’t expect this to go to construction prior to 2023 based on what I’m hearing. Hopefully we get that resolved.”
David Hooper, RFATS administrator, said the gas station on a corner of the intersection is questioning the need for the improvements that would require right-of-way from that owner. The intersection has an entrance to the ALDI grocery store opposite U.S. 521 from Marvin Road. Turns across U.S. 521, or Charlotte Hwy., are common there in both directions and can take a while due to traffic.
“We felt pretty strongly about our position to have the case thrown out, based on they’re essentially challenging the purpose and need of the project which is pretty clear based on the traffic benefit,” Mattox said. “Apparently it was not seen that way by the judge.”
Another project discussed Friday in Rock Hill doesn’t have the legal issues present in the Indian Land job, but has been a while coming. The RFATS policy committee is made up of elected and planning officials from Rock Hill, Fort Mill, Tega Cay, York County and Lancaster County, among others. Mayor John Gettys from Rock Hill said work at Celanese and India Hook roads in his city has run into avoidable delays.
“I think there’s a lesson here for all of us,” Gettys said.
Plans are to upgrade the traffic signal and add new and longer turn lanes. Construction bids came in June 14 and were “a little bit beyond what we expected,” Mattox said. The project is listed by SCDOT at $7.6 million. The construction estimate is almost $5.8 million of that total.
“We’ve seen this before, and we may end up having to make a judgment call,” Hooper said.
One option is for the state to step back and wait for soaring construction material costs to level out some. Mattox said the state couldn’t award a bid because only one was acceptable, and it came in higher than the state engineering estimate for the project. Two other bids didn’t meet state criteria.
“This is one of those where, two-and-a-half half million dollars more, you can’t do that,” Gettys said. “We have to wait.”
Yet, Gettys said, there have been multiple engineering plans at the site in the five or six years since the project began. There have been multiple staff members — Gettys said he isn’t laying blame for delays on current staff — to oversee the work. Mattox said there was a change in plans involving whether to tie in bridge replacement work nearby. There were sewer and utility relocation issues.
“That project could have been done by now,” Gettys said. “Should have been done by now.”
There were similar problems, he said, with work on Riverview Road and elsewhere.
“When we are not approaching projects with a sense of urgency, we invite issues like what we’re having now,” Gettys said. “And population is worse now than it was five years ago. By the time this is finished, it’s going to be worse that it is now. We invited this today, by our lack of sense of urgency in what we’re doing.”
Hooper said sometimes when projects enter the engineering phase, there can be attempts to get the perfectly engineered solution rather than a quicker one.
“It can extend things,” he said. “You keep adding things on and money is not unlimited. Time is not unlimited in a high-growth environment.”
Gettys said there has to be balance.
“We don’t want to chase money to just overpay for things,” he said, “but this would be done with a sense of urgency.”
There are SCDOT projects that continue on schedule. New turn lanes and space at Carowinds Boulevard and Pleasant Road is under construction and should be done by the end of October. That project is $5.8 million. The I-77 and S.C. 160 interchange remains on schedule for construction bids next year. The current estimate is $93 million there. Early next year a public meeting will be held for the I-77 interchange at Cherry and Celanese roads in Rock Hill.
Gettys has asked multiple times if that public meeting could push up into this fall, but the state has to have alignment alternatives to share before bringing them to the public.
“The problem with doing it too early is we don’t have a whole lot to tell,” Mattox said.
The I-77 exit at mile marker 81 that was designed to serve the Carolina Panthers headquarter site in Rock Hill, which since fell through, is on schedule to be done by the first of May.
This story was originally published June 27, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
