I want to take a moment to update you on the status of fixing South Carolina’s roadways. Thanks to the General Assembly’s passage of sustainable road funding that SCDOT has not had in 30 years, SCDOT has experienced a record-breaking year in the first year of the agency’s 10-Year Plan to Rebuild SC’s Roads. For the first time in the agency’s history, the total amount of road and bridge work underway on the state’s highways has exceeded $3 billion. This is three times the normal levels.
The focus for projects is Rural Road Safety, Paving, Bridge Replacements and Interstate Widenings. Projects are selected based on an analytical, not political process, where SCDOT engineers ranked projects based on objective and quantifiable factors. A link that explains how SCDOT determines which projects are funded through an analytical process can be found here: https://www.scdot.org/inside/planning.aspx#prioritization
The overall goal of the Pavement Program is to improve the quality of SC’s roads by up to 3% per year. SCDOT has awarded contracts totaling 2200 miles over the past year alone which is more than a doubling of the paving program. The 10-year plan calls for essentially another doubling of the paving program as the gas tax increase is fully phased-in. Thanks to the funding that SCDOT is now receiving SCDOT has achieved up to a 5% pavement improvement this year.The 10-Year Plan Bridge Program calls for a dramatic increase in funding for replacing Load-Restricted and Structurally Deficient bridges on SC’s major corridors. Three years ago (2015) the funding level for this target was $80 million. The new Bridge Program provides $150-180 million annually to begin to address the state’s critical bridge needs of the 2016 baseline of 750 structurally deficient bridges statewide.
In addition, the SCDOT Commission recently added to the first year success by approving a $417 million paving program which represents approximately 600 miles of additional ranked paving projects for year 2, the next year of the 10-Year Plan which begins on July 1, 2018. A link to the county-by-county paving project list for 2019 is available here: http://www.scdot-transfer.org/scdotphotos/Pavements2018_release.pdf As with all matters concerning state government, I want to hear your opinions and suggestions concerning these issues. Please contact me in my Columbia office located at 608 Gressette Office Building. You can reach me, or a member of my staff in Columbia at (803) 212-6000 or by fax at (803) 212-6011. My district office is located at 2523 East Highway 76, Marion, SC 29571, the phone number is (843) 423-8237 and the fax number is (843) 431-6049. You may also email me at kentwilliams@scsenate.gov My business phone is (843) 423-3904.