Finally, a Crosstown solution

The Crosstown will continue to be a flooding problem for a few more years, but help is on the way. The State Infrastructure Bank's $88 million grant, approved on Thursday, should provide the last major piece of funding needed to finish the long-overdue project.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley has long argued that the Crosstown's woes were primarily the responsibility of federal and state governments. And finally he was able to convince state officials to get on board, with major funding from the Department of Transportation and the Infrastructure Bank. Meanwhile, the city has agreed to apply $30 million toward the $155 million project.

But even with the necessary funding now in place, the project will take time. The ongoing installation of drainage under the Crosstown, financed by the federal government, will continue to disrupt street traffic into May.

That work will be followed by construction backed by state and local governments to collect the floodwater for discharge into the Ashley River.

Thankfully, after May, the project isn't expected to further confound traffic along the busy corridor.

Ironically, the federally funded project currently under way served to generate intense public interest following Post and Courier news reports and commentary in late 2010 and early 2011. The city had sought the full cost of the project from the feds, but was granted only $10 million, part of which is paying for beautification along the corridor.

A headline in February 2011 posed the question that Charlestonians have asked for decades: "Will the city ever fix the Crosstown?"

That question can now be answered in the affirmative.

Following a compelling presentation at City Hall last May, the state highway commission pledged $12.5 million for the project. And the city's creative financing plan for the SIB made its decision to get behind the project even easier, since it won't have to provide funding until 2017. The project is expected to be finished in 2020.

Mayor Riley notes that the city had plans for the drainage project in hand as it made application for federal stimulus funds. Consequently, the project was "shovel ready."

The issue was given further impetus during last year's campaign for mayor and council.

So all of a sudden, one of the most daunting public works projects in the city's history is getting close to becoming a reality.

The project won't be finished until after Mayor Riley serves out this, his final term. But he can be gratified to have gotten the project on the road to completion. So can council and city staff.

Residents who live along the Crosstown and motorists who have had to deal with the periodic flooding for decades will be the beneficiaries.

The floodwaters also will recede for the medical community in the hospital complex near the western terminus of the Crosstown.

And the Septima P. Clark Parkway, as the Crosstown is formally known, will finally be a worthy memorial to the civil rights leader for whom it is named.