By Ashley Fletcher Frampton
aframpton@scbiznews.com
Published Dec. 10, 2008

County leaders in the Lowcountry reaffirmed their commitment to commuter rail in the area on Wednesday, despite the lack of identifiable money for building it.

Dorchester County Council Chairman Larry Hargett said he has arranged a meeting in February among local government leaders and the chief of Norfolk-Southern Corp., which owns the railroad tracks a commuter rail might use.

Hargett, speaking at the third annual State of the Region breakfast meeting sponsored by the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, said he hoped the Feb. 17 meeting would be the first of many more.

He said the meeting would include county and municipal leaders but would not be open to the public.

Berkeley County Supervisor Dan Davis said that Interstate 26 has little room to expand further and that high-occupancy vehicle lanes would take away a needed travel lane.

“We’ve got to come up with other means of getting people from the northern end of our area to Charleston,” Davis said.

Davis and Hargett noted that counties in the Lowcountry have asked for $200 million from the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank, created and funded by the General Assembly.

But that bank is broke, Hargett said. State leaders have not appropriated any new dollars to the bank recently, and the money it had has been obligated to projects.

Hargett said Dorchester and Berkeley counties have separate road project requests submitted to the infrastructure bank, and those requests of about $214 million and $160 million would be in line ahead of the commuter rail request.

Hargett said $200 million would go a long way toward paying for the design and construction of commuter rail, assuming existing rail lines are used.

Davis pointed to commuter routes recently added to Tri-County Link, the area’s rural bus service, as evidence that people in the region are willing to give up their cars for mass transit.

Charleston County Council Vice Chairman Joe McKeown also spoke at the event but did not address commuter rail specifically.