Here’s the latest date for when a busy York County highway will reopen. Again.
Reopening for a major stretch of Pole Branch Road has a new, later date.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation announced the Lake Wylie road, between S.C. 274 and Fewell Road, will remain closed through July 18. Reopening had been set for mid-May.
Pole Branch closed in November as part of widening work through the Pennies for Progress cent sales tax program in York County. The anticipated opening then was May 22. A three-mile detour, still in use, runs along S.C. 274 and Fewell.
The highway closure had several delays due to wet weather and other factors. The plan was to close the road for six months.
The larger Pole Branch project is a $37.8 million construction. Blythe Development should have the work done, per county estimates, by 2021. The project runs from Landing Point to the North Carolina state line, widening sections to three or five lanes. The project aims to relieve growing congestion not just from recent high population growth in Lake Wylie, but also north of the state line on the Belmont, N.C. peninsula.
SCDOT traffic count data shows more than 35,000 vehicles per day travel S.C. 49 in Lake Wylie near the Buster Boyd Bridge. More than 20,000 vehicles head up S.C. 274 toward Pole Branch at the Three Points intersection, with almost 30,000 heading the opposite way toward Hands Mill Highway.
Pole Branch itself sees about 9,400 vehicle trips per day.
