WEST COLUMBIA — As West Columbia moves closer to finalizing plans to narrow a main road, some residents and local business owners have concerns that the plan could cause issues with traffic and access along the street.
The revitalization project, sometimes nicknamed a “road diet”, will take Meeting Street from a four-lane thoroughfare into a two-lane street. The project will extend from the beginning of Sunset Boulevard to 9th Street, just shy of a mile of roadway – complete with sidewalks, landscaped medians, and 63 street-parking spaces.
West Columbia Mayor Tem Miles said the purpose of the road diet is to create a more walkable district that will pull activity up from the popular River District.
“For years, we’ve wanted to spread the revitalization energy that we’ve worked so hard to get going across our town,” Miles said. “This is part of that.”
Councilmember David Moye said that safety was also a big factor in planning the road diet, which has been in the works for the past 15 years.
“Meeting street has a real problem with pedestrian and bike crashes and fatalities, even with the relatively few people walking or biking there now. If nothing is done, this will only get worse as the area becomes more popular,” Moye said.
But some residents and business owners along Meeting Street have criticized the proposed plans.
Restricted access?
Willie Wells, who owns Bill’s Music Shop and Pickin’ Parlor, said he’s concerned the proposed medians will make it impossible for performers with larger vehicles and buses to get in and out of his parking lot.
“I’ve got a 45-foot bus that I move in and out of here. When I have to get out of here, I’ve got to go all the way into the other lane. But if there's an island, I’d have to run up all over the median,” Wells said.
The current projections show seven medians up and down the 0.81-mile stretch, landscaped with trees and shrubs.
Wells isn’t convinced that the project will encourage more people to walk and shop along the road. Instead, he’s worried that it will decrease the visibility of his business.
“They’re telling me they want more foot traffic. Foot traffic from where? There’s no foot traffic,” Wells said. “What it’s going to do is hurt some of the businesses up and down the road, because everybody's not going to come down Meeting Street anymore. They’re going to go over to Jarvis Clapman (Boulevard), and we’re going to lose traffic.”
Across the street at Best Mattress, owner Buddy Delaney shared similar concerns, but said he sees both sides of the issue.
“On one hand, I’m really happy about where the city is going and the exciting things we’ve got going on,” Delaney said, noting his family’s store has been in town for almost a century. “But, I’m also a little concerned about narrowing the streets and adding the curbs and the medians. It’s just going to make it a little more difficult to get our tractor trailers in.”
The business has large trucks moving lumber, steel, and foam in and out of their manufacturing facility almost daily. Delaney believes the city can work out a "compromise" on the medians, perhaps by making them less wide or changing their placement. In general, he said he’s in favor of a slower moving Meeting Street.
Limited flexibility
The mayor said the plans are not finalized yet, but the city wanted to have a concept to take to stakeholders for input. Discussions with those business owners remain ongoing, and he hopes that plans will be finalized within the next couple of weeks.
Miles said the city has limited flexibility on the location of the medians, because SCDOT has asked for medians in specific locations to avoid dangerous cross-traffic turning.
“I don’t know what the final outcome is going to be. It’s still a work in progress. You may have seven (medians), you may have fewer,” he added.
It’s not just business owners who have been speaking out, though. Residents have taken to social media to voice concerns that the road diet will create a “bottleneck” during rush hour. One commenter called the move “short-sighted”, complaining that West Columbia is growing and that traffic is only going to get worse.
In response, Miles has been posting his own “traffic studies” from his walks up and down the street.
“Morning rush hour traffic study in progress: 8:19 am. Not a single east bound car,” he posted to social media alongside a photo of a single car idling at a stoplight.
The mayor said he’s been posting in part to provide a visual for how limited the scope of the project is, and also to give a reference for traffic utilization.
“It’s easy to say during rush hour it’s always crowded, but it’s not. Look, most of the time (there’s traffic) it’s not even due to rush hour,” Miles said.
Some residents raised concerns that the road diet will route increased traffic to the “rotting” bridges on Jarvis Clapman Boulevard and Blossom Street, pointing to the potholes riddling the pavement.
Miles agreed that the bridges were in “terrible shape,” but said those lines of inquiry were "disingenuous."
While he said the bridges all need work, he doesn’t believe the narrowing of Meeting Street will impact which point of entry to Columbia drivers choose.
The project will cost approximately $7.5 million, with a portion of that funding coming from COVID-relief funds. Miles expects the work to take about a year, wrapping up around early 2027.
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