Traffic Congestion, Road Construction, & Improvement Projects

[vicupstate]

SCDOT River and Richardson Streets & Poinsett HWy

This was presented to city council last Monday. 

[ingvegas]

21 hours ago, NewlyUpstate said:

Seems worth it. Can they just approve the penny tax for the 8 years, create a dashboard showing progress against these identified projects, and revisit effectiveness 8 years from now?

This is a smart idea. The County needs a full-scale marketing campaign if they think this will be awarded. Someone posted the WYFF article on Reddit and most of the comments show a lack of education (i.e. "but what about that billion dollars the State just found?") or a belief that the money won't go to repairing the roads ("they won't use it for roads", "what about the money we already pay", etc.). 

If the County was smart, they would have started educating the public about this a year ago. The next best time is today. 

1. I like your idea about having an active dashboard.

2. They need to address the public's perception that the money won't be spent correctly or it will be spent overpaying "the good ole' boys." Make it a requirement of the tax that a third-party auditor will conduct a yearly audit to verify contracts and spending - and publish this report. Make public all bids and contracts. Show the public that their money will be spent correctly.  The public will care more about this than "improved safety" or "we need to get things updated before it costs more."

3. Get residents who approved it in other counties to talk about what it has done for them.

4. Show residents some before and after pictures. We have some bad roads and intersections - this won't be hard.

5. Run a PR campaign that makes it a matter of civic pride (be the good guy/lady).  Get local conservative groups onboard. Greenville Republican party, and others, squarely behind this - it passes like the breeze.

6. Run up fees on new projects adding to sprawl. Demonize sprawl and make it clear to the public that sprawl is the reason the current rates can't cover keeping nice what we had before. Current tax rates from years ago cannot cover miles and miles of new developed area and keep current areas up to date. You want John Q. Public to feel like someone else is having to pay more than him. He will fix what is there, but these "damn newcomers" will have to pay their fair share. 

 

Edited April 25 by ingvegas

[gman430]

On 4/24/2024 at 11:09 AM, NewlyUpstate said:

Seems worth it. Can they just approve the penny tax for the 8 years, create a dashboard showing progress against these identified projects, and revisit effectiveness 8 years from now?

They need to provide an actual list of which roads would be repaved within the different tier levels. 

[bikeoid]

22 hours ago, gman430 said:

They need to provide an actual list of which roads would be repaved within the different tier levels. 

Does this tiered road list count? https://www.foxcarolina.com/2024/04/23/greenville-co-penny-tax-commission-releases-list-potential-road-projects/

[gman430]

1 hour ago, bikeoid said:

Does this tiered road list count? https://www.foxcarolina.com/2024/04/23/greenville-co-penny-tax-commission-releases-list-potential-road-projects/

That doesn’t list the actual roads that will be repaved. 

[GvilleSC]

Related to the Church Street bridge upgrades: over the weekend, a car went airborne off of the bridge and landed in the surface parking of The Ellison on Broad below. Amazingly, the driver survived. It's not a guarantee that the planned safety measures could have prevented this, but it's possible they may have helped keep the car on the bridge. Depending on the time of day, this could have been a very tragic event for any of the buildings and populace adjacent to the bridge.

[gman430]

https://www.foxcarolina.com/video/2024/05/03/fox-carolina-investigates-lights-out-upstate-highways/