Our view: Are we driving into a traffic nightmare?

With the uncertainty of the North Carolina Garden Parkway’s future following the March 13 federal court ruling that found the proposed 21.9-mile toll road from I-458 in Mecklenburg to I-85 in south Gastonia violated federal law (heraldonline.com/news/local/community/lake-wylie-pilot/article15033692.html), we wonder what traffic nightmares could be in our future with more than 3,000 residences coming to the Lake Wylie and only one route across the Catawba River – Buster Boyd Bridge.

Partly as a result of that uncertainty about the parkway’s future, and partly because of concerns from neighbors about increasing traffic and money, Pennies for Progress planners have elected to go with a three-lane width for portions of Pole Branch Road and S.C. 274, rather than five as originally proposed. That project is expected to start construction in 2017.

While these decisions represent a victory for environmental concerns, they serve only to postpone a traffic issue in our area to a time when the situation will have attained crisis proportions.

There are 20 planned subdivisions either active, pending or proposed for Lake Wylie. According to York County figures, that represents more than 3,000 new lots. If one assumes a suburban family typically consists of two adults and two children, that comes to some 12,000 new residents. That’s probably 6,000 added vehicles on our roads. And those are just the projects that have reached the county list.

But it gets worse when you look at our community’s geographic location. In most suburban areas, whenever an increase in population results in main arterial roads becoming clogged at peak drive times, drivers seek alternative routes. Here in Lake Wylie, we don’t have that option because of the lake.

Yes, ironically the feature that makes this area great plays havoc with our traffic. The lake with its many inlets, creeks and coves, added to the fact there’s only one artery connecting the eastern and western shores creates a situation of having only a single winding route to get from point A to point B.

For example, Charlotte Highway/S.C. 49 on any weekday during morning commute hours or evening times 4:30-6 p.m. is bumper to bumper traffic. Drivers can’t turn off onto an intersecting street to seek an alternate route, because it doesn’t exist.

While we applaud halting road and any construction project that could endanger our lake environmentally, surely there are better ways to build to construct alternate routes across the river.

We believe state and county government officials in North and South Carolina need to take serious leadership in our region to make sure the roads and highways are planned and built to at least try to keep up with our burgeoning population. If they don’t, the dream of many homeowners to live in a lake community may well devolve into a traffic nightmare.

This story was originally published March 27, 2015 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Our view: Are we driving into a traffic nightmare?."