Roads lead to traffic jam central

SUMMERVILLE -- An oncoming car smashed into a car trying to turn, and morning rush-hour traffic came to a stop, backing up in four directions. For nearly two hours.

At ground zero was Cooks Crossroads, an oddly configured intersection of two country roads at what used to be the edge of nowhere. It's now become a danger.

When the wreck occurred a few weeks ago, parents couldn't get students to the new Ashley Ridge High School or to Beech Hill Elementary. Drivers trying to get to work sat and fumed in a line backed up nearly a mile toward busy Dorchester Road.

With the high school's opening last year, the rural intersection of Bacons Bridge and Ashley River roads has become the latest commuter-traffic nightmare. The school's opening more than doubled to 4,800 the daily number of vehicles on Bacons Bridge on that side of the intersection, which was the least-used quadrant.

With the school and surrounding suburban growth, some 16,000 cars now travel daily on the other side, where much of Ashley River road's commuter traffic goes. The daily capacity for a two-lane road is considered 14,000 at most, said Mark Nesbit, S.C. Transportation Department district traffic engineer.

"It's a fairly narrow two-lane road," he said. The road was built years ago without much shoulder. "You don't have a lot of room for error out there."

You don't have much room for anything anymore. A few weeks earlier, at evening rush hour, cars were rerouted down Ashley River Road from a wreck on U.S. Highway 17A north of the intersection, backing up traffic more than a mile from the four-way stop sign to block the entrance of the Legend Oaks subdivision, where Margie Fendley lives.

To get to The Citadel or anywhere near on time, she had to drive 20 miles in the opposite direction through Ridgeville.

"It's really a shame that nothing was done when they built the new high school about widening the road -- for these situations, for the traffic, the younger drivers, for emergency vehicles," she said.

What makes the problem worse is the intersection's design. The roads meet at a four-way stop sign. But Bacons Bridge also veers to the left as it comes out of Summerville, to divert traffic headed toward Charleston to a "T" intersection on the Ashley River Road a few hundred yards down from the four-way stop.

Meanwhile, cars coming into Summerville from the four-way signs also face a "T" intersection at the apex of a Bermuda Triangle created by the three. That's six stop signs within about a city block of each other, exacerbating the backups and creating hazards as drivers take chances or try to dodge the backups.

"It's not the intersection, it's the cars in the intersection. People are not doing what they're supposed to be doing. People are running stop signs, people are not yielding, people are following too closely, they're not allowing enough distance to stop. That's what we're seeing," said Lance Cpl. Bob Beres, of the S.C. Highway Patrol.

It would be nice to say help is on the way. But the Glenn McConnell Parkway in West Ashley was designed 30 years ago to relieve traffic on the river road, Nesbit said. The parkway, designed to end somewhere in the vicinity of the intersection, never has been completed.

A project widening Bacons Bridge to five lanes as far as the high school is in preliminary planning and goes to public hearing Nov. 19.

But that project likely will involve rebuilding and raising Bacons Bridge, said Wallace Ackerman, Dorchester County Penny Sales Tax Transportation Authority committee vice chairman.

It would take at least two years to complete, no money has been committed yet, and sales-tax money is now hard to come by.

As for the intersection, "Oh, it's a problem. It's awful," he said. "But even if we build the road, the intersection will still be a problem, with all the people moving out there," he said.

Reach Bo Petersen at 937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.