Residents study Johns Island road proposals

At a day-long workshop about Johns Island traffic issues, area residents were once again at odds over the idea of building a road through southern Johns Island, and there was little support for the suggested alternative of widening existing island roads.

The cross-island road proposal, dubbed the Sea Islands Greenway, remains in the early planning stages despite nearly 15 years of studies and meetings. Charleston County officials don't exactly know where the road would go, how to pay for it, or whether to build it at all.

County Council agreed in September to not only take a fresh look at the cross-island idea, but to also study the potential widening of several of the tree-canopied winding roads for which Johns Island is known. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley endorsed the county's plan to study those road options, after the idea of a four-lane cross-island expressway was scaled back to a two-lane "greenway," and the town of Kiawah provided some funding.

And that's how people ended up at public workshops at the Johns Island library branch today, where they were asked to consider if they would prefer to see Main, Bohicket and River roads widened, or a new two-lane road built through the middle of the island. Nearly 260 attended, and most of the discussion at tables with county planners was about the cross-island proposal.

The Sea Islands Greenway is proposed as a limited-access road, likely financed with tolls, that would run from the Betsy Kerrison Parkway near Kiawah to the proposed extension of Interstate 526 below Maybank Highway. Whether I-526 gets completed is a separate question, awaiting new funding estimates from the state next year.

Read more in Tuesday's editions of The Post and Courier.