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Carolinks: The deal killer
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
The design and actual location of the road that the South Carolina State Ports Authority intends to build to link its planned $545 million terminal to I-26 is still an open question due to opposition from Charleston County.
The most recent version of the road raised concerns because it would send trucks through Union Heights.
An earlier version of the connector would have been farther south, but that idea was scrapped because it would have required a cloverleaf interchange with
I-26, making it more dangerous for trucks entering and leaving the interstate.
Carolinks said it needs the road to be nudged a few hundred feet northward from its most recent proposed location to avoid its impinging on the company’s property at Shipyard Creek and effectively rendering the intermodal operation infeasible.
But whichever route the connector road takes, Carolinks’ proposed local boutique trucking service would seem to fly in the face of the company’s longtime contention that it will remove trucks from local roadways. The trucks it will theoretically remove are those that would be traveling long distances and heading out of town.
The plan, as presented, would also do nothing to reduce truck traffic from either the Union Pier or Columbus Street terminals adjacent to downtown Charleston.
Carolinks President Lucy Duncan-Scheman doesn’t argue the point, quickly allowing that “20 percent of the port’s volume is transported to businesses in the Charleston region, and that’s not going to change.
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