BLYTHEWOOD – New proposals concerning road widening and new road and rail extensions to the Scout Motors development were shared with the Blythewood Planning Commissioners at their regular monthly meeting on Monday night.
One proposal, explained by Brooks Bickley of the S.C. Department of Transportation, is to relocate the Boomer Road entrance to U.S. 21 about 150-200 feet towards the Town of Blythewood, then re-route U.S. 21 from that new Boomer Road intersection southwestwardly through the former Google property, to just past the Fairfield Electric power station where it would tie back in to U.S. 21.
Under that proposal, Farrow Road would also be realigned to intersect with the re-routed U.S. 21. The newly proposed connector road from the Scout plant would then pour into a point along the rerouted section of U.S. 21 where additional turn lanes would be added, according to Bickley.
“The rail spur that’s going to feed the Scout development was originally proposed as an at-grade crossing on U.S. 21,” Bickley said. “In order to avoid an at-grade crossing there, one alternative is to take the re-routed section of US 21 over the rail.
The new connector road that will be coming from the Scout plant, over the newly proposed Exit 26 interchange on I-77 (between Exit 24 and Exit 27) would then tie in to the rerouted U.S. 21.
“Another part of this project for S.C. DOT would be the widening of I-77 northbound,” Bickley said. “That widening would start just north of Exit 24 where it actually necks down from three lanes to two lanes in the northbound direction. We would continue that third lane north to give additional capacity to I-77.”
The proposal also calls for the rerouted section of U.S. 21 to be widened to 3 to 5 lanes.
Thomas and Hutton is contracted by Richland County to do the widening work on Blythewood Road between Syrup Mill Road and Muller Road, with an extension of work (turn lanes primarily) to continue a short distance on Muller Road. Thomas and Hutton are also contracted with the county to widen Community Road to four lanes and to construct the new county road from the Scout plant east across the proposed I-77 interchange to U.S. 21.
The County’s Penny project includes the current installation of a new roundabout at the Community and Blythewood Road intersection.
“So this is going to be the new north axis that the county will own,” Bickley said. “We don’t have a lot of details on the proposed Exit 26 interchange yet, but Norfolk Southern will be installing the new rail line which will come from the other side of Highway 21 down across and into the site,” Bickley said.
“We’re in the process of doing a traffic study right now that should be to us in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “Once we have that traffic study it can give us final recommendations of what actual improvements need to be done and where.”
Bickley said the traffic count was finished before school ended and that S.C. DOT is just waiting on the calculations to be finalized.
What has Scout proposed for noise, decreased property values and environmental concerns for the neighborhood of Ashley Oaks? The rail spur will be running directly next to homes.
This is some ridiculous stuff. It will only worsen the bottleneck that is US 21 at Rimer Pond, and US 21 at Landford and Blythewood Road. Sure hope this isn’t Tepper 2.0.