Designs unveiled for road widening

SUMMERVILLE — A design for a road widening that might not be completed was laid out Thursday for residents who live along it.

For some, the Bacons Bridge Road plan had a familiar look.

"It's Trolley Road all over again," said Town Councilman Bob Jackson, who represents neighborhoods along both routes.

Trolley Road is a busy commercial four-lane running from Summerville to its Oakbrook suburb. Bacons Bridge Road is the residential two-lane that runs in the same direction, a little farther west.

Both connect to Dorchester Road, which also is undergoing a controversial widening project.

The Bacons Bridge project would widen that road to four lanes from Trolley Road to just beyond S.C. Highway 61. Under a separate project, plans also have begun to widen the road farther south to Ashley Ridge High School.

The entire area has become crowded with commuter traffic.

The mood in the meeting room at Old Fort Baptist Church contrasted sharply with the strident tone of nearby Ashborough East residents who packed a Dorchester County Council meeting Monday to oppose plans for widening Dorchester Road.

This one wasn't your usual, contentious road-widening hearing. Even though more than 200 homes would lose property and a home and a day care would be removed, little is left of the controversy that surrounded the project early on.

There are just too many cars now. One man left the meeting saying they should leave the road alone; the widening just wasn't needed. But few among nearly 100 people who turned out agreed.

Lucille Limehouse will lose the azaleas, pines and live oak that have shielded her home from the road for 40 years.

"That's what we're accustomed to and that's what we'll lose," the 79-year-old said. But talk of the project has been going on so long now, "I'm tired of it. I wish they'd go ahead and do it."

"They're going to build the road and a road needs to be built. That's all there is to it," said Richard Limehouse, her husband.

But the work will be done first on the section of Bacons Bridge between Highway 61 and Dorchester Road. Most homes, including the Limehouses', sit along the other section of the road toward Trolley Road.

If the widening work under way relieves enough traffic congestion, the work that would affect most of the homes "is way down the road. It might not be necessary," Jackson said.

Either way, Lucille Limehouse said, she might not live to see it.

But people at the meeting told architects from Davis & Floyd and officials from the Dorchester County Sales Tax Transportation Authority that if the more residential section is widened then the redesigned road should be more scenic.

Jackson is pushing for more unpaved medians "to prevent it from becoming another Trolley Road," he said.

"These (roads) are all supposed to be avenues or boulevard according to the county master plan. They should be aesthetically pleasing, as well as having the bike lanes, sidewalks and plantings" that are already in the preliminary plan, said Sue Wehman, who lives nearby.

Residents who must deal with the traffic snarls toward Highway 61 were glad to see the plans for widening and adding a traffic light to that intersection.

Dealing with back-ups there "is painful. It's ugly. This will fix that," said Jay Tyo, who lives in Legend Oaks along Highway 61.

"I'm just glad that these projects are moving forward instead of waiting on permits" like the nearby Berlin Myers Parkway extension project, said County Council Chairman Jamie Feltner.

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