Quartz Countertops in James Island, SC

JAMES ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) — The James Island Town Council voted to request that the South Carolina Department of Transportation remove a median from a planned safety improvement project.

The SCDOT project SC-171 involves safety improvements along Folly Road, a busy corridor used daily by island residents. The project includes sidewalks, better crossways and infrastructure updates, but a proposed median has drawn opposition from residents and council members.

“Call us, the people of the Town of James Island foolish, but we know this road, we drive this road every day and we think these are going to be detrimental to our neighborhoods, detrimental to our businesses and detrimental to the functionality of Folly Road,” Councilman Lewis Dodson said.

Dodson made a motion to authorize the mayor’s request that SCDOT remove the controversial median from the project and replace it with other effective safety measures. Thursday evening, the council approved the motion unanimously.

Residents spoke during public comment, defending their concerns about peace, safety, business and quality of life.

“55 years of living on this James Island, I got a big problem with it. I don’t just have a problem. Every person in this folder right here, pages and pages and pages of citizens,” Marilyn Clifford, a James Island community member, said as she showed a packet of signatures protesting the median.

Another resident, John Peters, said the median would add to existing congestion problems on the road.

“They want to just add more to the problem. That’s really what it’s going to be. More congestion. If not, there’ll end up being bumper-to-bumper accidents more than anything and still we’re going to have the problem,” Peters said.

“We want 90%, let’s just work out the safety of the rest of it. That’s the goal,” Dodson said.

Councilman Michael Williams said the town must be willing to fight to ensure the rest of the project moves forward if the median is rejected.

Just two weeks ago, SCDOT engineers came to talk about the project with the community members and nearly everyone echoed the same sentiment: they liked most of the plan, just not the median.

After continuing to ask if it was possible to move forward with the improvement project without the medians, residents feel they are still in the dark with no clear answer from engineers.

“I was told he was noncommittal and listened to us, but I felt like he was somewhat defensive of the project. I feel like he believes that it will not happen if we don’t, but he did imply that he would look at things again,” Mayor Brook Lyon said.

A concern engineers expressed during the last meeting two weeks ago was that the project’s funding would be dependent on the median’s cost.

Lyon said the town will begin conversations with federal representatives to explore alternative options and what that means for funding the rest of the project.

“We have to be willing to fight to the nth degree to make sure that 90% happens to make sure that the feds commit to making this happen if we reject the median,” Williams said.