By Matthew French
Staff Writer

With construction already underway, and more planned during the next decade, the major corridor through Mount Pleasant will present drivers with an ugly commute for years to come.

As the town grows to and exceeds 60,000 residents, the town’s major artery must expand to accommodate them.

The first phase of construction along Highway 17, widening the roadway from four lanes to six between the Mark Clark Expressway and the Isle of Palms Connector, has begun. This first phase is expected to take about 18 months to complete.

By most accounts, Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant will be bursting at the seams in a few short years. The roadway, a highway with two lanes in each direction, currently handles about 40,000 cars per day.

That number is expected to jump to between 60,000 and 70,000 in the next 15 years. The town has commissioned the consultancy of Day Wilburn and Associates out of Atlanta to study the problem and help determine the best course of action, specifically for the section of roadway between the Mark Clark Expressway and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

The rest of Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant, from the expressway to the Charleston National Country Club, is already slated for widening over the next several years.

“We’ve had our first public meeting and will probably have a succession more,” says Mount Pleasant administrator Mac Burdette.

“We expect to receive the recommendations from Day Wilburn and Associates some time in the September or October time frame. And I do mean recommendations, plural.”

A citizens committee launched last year has expressed concerns and raised community ire that the town had already settled on a proposal to build overpasses at major intersections along the Johnnie Dodds Boulevard stretch of the roadway. At the public meeting, more than 500 residents voiced their opinions.

Mayor Harry Hallman says he would not enact any proposal that would be detrimental to the business community, which he considers an indispensable part of the town’s tax base.

“We’ll take a good look at the proposals and make a determination as to what would be best for the town,” he says.

The town originally commissioned Day Wilburn to determine the cost of flyovers only, but has since expanded the scope to include rotaries.

But that is just the beginning. The Johnnie Dodds Boulevard plan will likely cost between $110 million and $150 million, and the town thinks that the half-cent sales tax approved by voters in November would pay for most, if not all, of that cost. The town will have to submit its proposal to Charleston County for final approval.

“If everything goes through as planned, then begins the frustrating part,” says Burdette.

“We will have a plan, we will have the funding source, but none of this is going to happen overnight. We’re looking at probably a seven- to 10-year construction phase, depending on what kind of improvements are required.”

Burdette says the reasons for the lengthy time period of study and construction are threefold: the county will only have part of the total money, which would come to the project in phases; it takes a long time to acquire a right-of-way, and requires considerable time in court; and beyond the town and the county, the project requires input from the South Carolina Department of Transportation and the federal Highway Administration because Highway 17 is a federal highway.

“In the meantime, traffic in Mount Pleasant, and particularly along Highway 17, is going to continue to increase,” Burdette says.

“We estimate that 35 percent to 40 percent of traffic has nothing to do with Mount Pleasant. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone going from McClellanville to Charleston or from New York to Miami. Highway 17 is the main corridor and will remain so, even while expansion is ongoing.”

Matthew French is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at mfrench@crbj.com.

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