Fort Mill and bypass commuters will have a new route to drive. Here’s what to expect
Drivers who live, work or go to school in a growing part of Fort Mill will have a new route starting Friday. So will drivers just passing through.
A newly configured intersection will open where Fort Mill Parkway ends at Spratt Street. In the new alignment, Spratt will come to a T intersection into the bypass parkway. The end of the bypass, or Fort Mill Parkway, often backs up during rush hours near the town wastewater treatment plant due to drivers turning left or heading straight toward U.S. 21.
“It’s been a long time coming for this intersection,” said Patrick Hamilton, director of York County’s Pennies of Progress program. ”Hopefully it will improve the flow of that intersection.”
Pennies is a one-cent sales tax program that runs in seven-year spans. The revenue builds, resurfaces and improves roads in York County. Voters must approve each Pennies campaign. The intersection set to open Friday is part of the third Pennies vote, held in 2011.
The traffic shift on Friday to the new intersection largely completes, in terms of driver experience, a roughly $8.5 million effort.
”There will still be work ongoing,” Hamilton said. “For the general public, from their perspective, the new route is open and it’s functioning the way it will be long-term.”
The new intersection is part of a larger network of road improvement in the area. When the town bypass opened in full in 2016, in became a common cut-through for drivers from Rock Hill, Baxter and unincorporated areas on the west to places from Indian Land and Ballantyne on the west. It’s routine to see many license plates from both North Carolina and South Carolina on the road.
The bypass opened a ring around Fort Mill from near the U.S. 21 bridge over the Catawba River at Rock Hill around to the Dobys Bridge Road, Gold Hill Road and other corridors all the way up to Tega Cay. Planners knew even as the final stages of bypass opened, it would need widening.
In the area near the intersection opening Friday, expansion work at the wastewater plant join new schools and homes. Catawba Ridge High School, Forest Creek Middle School and River Trail Elementary School opened beside one another on the bypass. Elizabeth, Waterside at the Catawba, Arden Mill and other neighborhoods are under construction for what will grow into thousands of homes. There are new grocery stores and restaurants there, or planned.
The most recent Pennies campaign in 2017 includes widening an area from I-77 across Sutton Road to U.S. 21, through the new intersection and up Fort Mill Parkway to US Foods to five lanes. Construction should start in 2025. Separately, homebuilder Lennar is widening portions for its Elizabeth development.
”There’s a lot of work going on in that area,” Hamilton said.
The new intersection by itself should be a noticeable improvement, not just for the new route drivers will take but in how long they’ll have to wait at a light to take it.
“That intersection has been known to back up quite a ways,” Hamilton said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2023 at 11:37 AM.
