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Citizen’s council proposes Highway 17 boulevard
Mount Pleasant Mayor not sold on idea
By Matthew French
Staff Writer
With all of the hype surrounding the soon-to-be-completed Cooper River bridge, comparably little attention had been paid to what will happen at the foot of the bridge when construction is finished and the bridge opened.
Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant, also known as Johnnie Dodds Boulevard for the first 3 1/2 miles from the foot of the bridge, has become a major corridor for commuters from east of the Cooper River. When the Mark Clark Expressway opened up all the way down to Highway 17, residents between Rivers Avenue and Daniel Island had a choice of which road they would take to get into Charleston. As more expansion takes place north of the Wando River and east of Highway 41 in Mount Pleasant, Highway 17’s capacity will be stretched to the limit.
What happens to Highway 17, which has emerged as Mount Pleasant’s primary business corridor, was the subject of a meeting involving East Cooper residents and business owners late last month.
The East Cooper Planning Council, comprised of residents and businessmen from Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms, Sullivan’s Island, Daniel Island, and Cainhoy, first met 10 months ago with 33 people interested in helping shape the future of growth east of the Cooper River. The group has since narrowed its focus to concentrate on education and transportation.
“Our Main Street Initiative focuses on our streets, which should be vibrant areas that can accommodate traffic, walking and doing business,” says Michelle Sinkler, director of the planning council.
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. How that traffic will be handled will be the subject of debate for the next several years.
One proposal, which the East Cooper Planning Council opposes, involves the creation of flyovers, or overpasses, at major intersections along Highway 17, including at Houston Northcutt Boulevard and Bowman Road. The group surmises that the overpasses will be an aesthetic blight on the community as well as a detriment to businesses located along the corridor.
“The bridge will most likely lead to more traffic, which could lead to more access and visibility for the businesses along Highway 17,” says Tony Woody, an engineer and member of the council. “We shouldn’t jeopardize the experience of shopping, working and living in the area. The proposed flyovers would be similar to those used in Atlanta and Charlotte, and would change the look and feel of that corridor.”
Woody says businesses along Highway 17 would suffer because cars would pass by them at higher rates of speed. In addition, the flyovers could potentially block motorists’ views of the businesses flanking the roadway, rendering them virtually invisible.
The group instead proposes that Highway 17 should be changed into a multi-purpose boulevard that has three lanes in each direction to handle high-speed traffic in the middle, flanked on either side by slower frontage roads with tree-lined sidewalks. Instead of having traffic signals at the most congested intersections of Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, the group proposes roundabouts, or rotaries, which, similar to those on Rifle Range Road or Mathis Ferry Road in Mount Pleasant, would slow traffic down while keeping it at a constant flow.
In a film presented by the council, Brent Havens, owner of Havens Picture Framing located at 1070 Johnnie Dodds Blvd. in Mount Pleasant, says the installation of the flyovers, which would negate the need for traffic signals at the intersections to stem the flow of through traffic, would mean many motorists would bypass his framing shop without ever having known it was there.
“The flyovers are a means to hurl people by our businesses instead of bringing people to them,” says Havens.
The planning council has retained the services of Thomas and Hutton Engineering Co., which did a cost comparison of the flyovers vs. the boulevard/roundabout plans, and determined the planning council’s proposal could be completed for less than half the cost of the proposed flyovers. Thomas and Hutton says the flyovers would cost about $35 million apiece, or a total of $110 million for the project, where the planning council’s proposal could be completed for as little as $30 million.
Mount Pleasant Mayor Harry Hallman, says the group makes some good points in its proposal, but feels they are “doing a disservice to this community by making inflammatory statements.”
“We’ve hired a consultant, Day Wilburn and Associates out of Atlanta, to look at 17 and tell us how we can handle 60,000 to 70,000 cars a day in the future,” he says. “We’ve given them an $80,000 contract to look at the three north-south corridors in Mount Pleasant—Rifle Range Road, Mathis Ferry Road and Highway 17—and take one of those and enhance its carrying capacity. I expect we’ll get their report back within 90 days, and I don’t want to start a serious dialog until we hear what they have to say.”
Hallman says the flyover proposal came about as a result of discussions he had with the Charleston County Council, which has financial oversight over any project that will involve enhancements to Highway 17.
“In discussions I had with engineers, they said there is not any way in the world the roadway could handle 60,000 to 70,000 cars a day with an at-grade intersection with traffic lights,” Hallman says. “So I’m leaning toward the flyovers, but I’m not locked into them. I’m not locked into anything. We’re trying to do this in a scientific way so that we don’t have $120 million locked up in a fiasco.”
Hallman says he would not enact any proposal that would be detrimental to the business community, which is an indispensable part of the town’s tax base.
“The business community is most definitely vital to us,” he says. “We’ll take a good look at the proposals and make a determination as to what would be best for the town.”
Matthew French covers engineering and governmental policy for the Business Journal. E-mail him at mfrench@crbj.com.
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