A $54 million highway newly under way in midlands South Carolina will incorporate a number of features not often seen in roadway projects in Lexington County region. The Columbia Corridor project in Chapin includes two new roadways, a roundabout and additional travel lanes, all aimed at easing traffic congestion, improving safety for both drivers and pedestrians, and enhancing growth in the downtown area.
Work on the project, awarded to McClam and Associates in May, began in July. While it's generally known as a road widening project, Joey McIntyre, program manager of SCDOT central midlands area, told Construction Equipment Guide, it's much more.
SCDOT photo
“It's more of a complete downtown improvement for Chapin,” McIntyre said. “The main aspect is widening the current two-lane Columbia Avenue from I-26 into downtown but also providing two new alignment roadways that'll serve the whole downtown community of Chapin.”
The expanded main road as well as the new alignment roadways also will feature sidewalks allowing pedestrians to walk through downtown.
Columbia Avenue, one of Chapin's busiest corridors, will be widened to five lanes for a stretch of about 3 mi., McIntyre said. Each of the two new alignment roads will be a single lane in each direction with a raised median in the middle.
“It's somewhat of an access management style project, where we're trying to cut down on some of the turning movements to allow things like a free flow to go through town.”
SCDOT recently wrapped up an interchange improvement project where Columbia Avenue crosses I-26. Part of the initial work on the new Columbia Corridor project will be to mill and resurface the mainline where the interchange improvement project ended. “That mainline took a lot of damage during the interchange project,” McIntyre said. “We're going to be out there working for the better part of three years. So, we're going to resurface the roadway so that it has a little bit of life left to it while we're doing all our work because once we really get going and we start bringing all that large equipment on, it's going to continue to deteriorate. We wanted to refresh that.”
SCDOT photo
The new alignment roadways and the roundabout are “atypical” for the area, McIntyre said. Usually, this type of project would involve widening only. The roundabout will be constructed behind the Chapin High School, connecting to the student parking which will allow students to safely leave school and go to a roundabout, as opposed to a signalized light, or even worse, an unsignalized intersection.
“Roundabouts started slow in South Carolina, but we are putting in a lot of them now,” he said. “I've got five in development ... When our traffic safety office has high crash rate intersections, they'll go in and implement roundabouts, so it's something that's really starting to get a lot of traction here. The raised medians are something that's starting to gain a lot of traction here in South Carolina as well.”
SCDOT engineers have been studying Columbia Avenue for years, with preliminary design work starting more than a decade ago. In about 2017, engineers selected the current configuration and SCDOT was able to secure funding to get started in 2020. The last six years were largely finalizing the design and plans, McIntyre said.
“This was the least impactful to be able to meet the purpose and need of the project, which was to help congestion and downtown shaping, and also provide some safety improvements.”
Most of the property for the new roads and the widening was existing open space or buildings on the Chapin High School campus, he said.
Lexington County is one of the fastest growing areas in South Carolina, itself one of the fastest growing states in the country.
Combine that with Chapin's proximity to Lake Murray and “everything is just kind of growing leaps and bounds,” McIntyre said. “It's a lake community. There are three big peninsulas that go out onto that lake. Currently, all three of those peninsulas have to funnel through a small town to be able to get to the interstate. That obviously causes bottlenecks. The design we're constructing gives those three peninsulas alternative routes. Some of them will be able to take the two new alignment roadways and never have to go through the downtown area. It just kind helps alleviate all that traffic and provides alternative routes through town.”
