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Residents urge Transportation Advisory Committee to prioritize bike and pedestrian safety
Summary
At the March 4 committee meeting, bicycling advocates urged the committee to require Complete Streets elements and to use a possible penny sales-tax to fund an off-road pathway on Highway 170 and other safety projects, citing state and national rankings showing high bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in South Carolina.
Bluffton — Two cyclists and advocates asked the Beaufort County Transportation Advisory Committee on March 4 to prioritize bicycle and pedestrian safety when the committee ranks projects for a potential penny sales-tax measure.
"South Carolina currently ranks second of the most dangerous states for cyclists," said Ray Cipellini, treasurer of the Low Country Bike and Walk Advocates, citing national report-card metrics for infrastructure, funding and safety. Cipellini told the committee the state ranks 47th of 50 for bicycle- and pedestrian-infrastructure in the League of American Bicyclists'annual report and urged the committee to approve only projects that include Complete Streets elements.
The plea was echoed by Dave Kimell, a Bluffton-area bicycle advocate, who asked the committee to prioritize acquiring easements along Highway 170 as part of the pending road-widening effort so an off-road, 10-foot paved pathway could be built as part of that project. "Once built, the pathway will become a segment of the East Coast Greenway," Kimell said, adding the path would connect existing trails and improve transportation safety and recreational access.
Why it matters: committee members are assembling a prioritized project list to compare municipal and county needs against projects identified in the LATS long-range transportation plan. Advocates said that without explicit Complete Streets language — and funding set aside for bike/ped facilities and easements — many resurfacing and routine projects will not deliver the infrastructure pedestrians and cyclists need.
Committee response and context: staff and committee members described how different funding sources are treated: CTC funds are primarily targeted to resurfacing and local county roads, while another county tag fee and state DOT resurfacing pots cover other needs. Members acknowledged that resurfacing alone typically does not require adding bike lanes, while full road reconstruction projects are a more typical trigger for added bicycle or pedestrian facilities.
Next steps: the committee is asking each municipality to provide a short, ranked list of priority projects and will combine those submissions with corridor-level studies from the LATS plan to build a recommendation for county council.
