With $200M, SCDOT adds 120 bridges to construction list

S.C. Department of Transportation employees and contractors work on emergency repairs on Interstate 20 near the Wateree River in Kershaw County on Dec. 22, 2023. The split in the rail on the right-hand side shows how the bridge had settled about 3 inches along the expansion joint. A steel beam custom made overnight and inserted underneath shored it up. (Provided by SCDOT)

COLUMBIA — An additional 120 bridges across South Carolina are on the docket for repairs after the state Department of Transportation received $200 million in the budget specifically for bridge projects.

The updated list of bridges, which the state transportation commission approved last week, is part of an ongoing effort to fix the state’s aging and dilapidated bridges, which officials say is a top priority .

Roughly 30% of the state’s 8,400 bridges are at least 60 years old. In another decade, if the department continues fixing and replacing bridges at its current rate of about 50 per year, it will still have 3,900 bridges 60 years or older, Rob Perry, deputy secretary for engineering, told commissioners during a recent meeting.

“So, we really need to more than double our bridge program to get ahead of this,” Perry said.

The $200 million from legislators will help with that, he said.

The DOT hopes it’s the first installment toward a five-year, $1 billion commitment.

Half of the $200 million will go toward high-travel interstates and busy state highways, accounting for 20 of the added bridges.

They include bridges on the U.S. 501 Bypass over the Waccamaw River in Horry County, U.S. 29 over the Enoree River in Greenville County, U.S. 52 over Lynches River and Lynches River Swamp in Florence County, and Interstate 95 over Tearcoat Branch in Clarendon County.

The other half will go toward other, less busy roads, which made up the other 100 .

The money adds onto $239 million already dedicated to bridge replacements and repairs this fiscal year, Perry said.

Since the department launched its 10-year plan in 2017, 260 bridges have been repaired or replaced, and construction continues on 114 more bridges. An additional 141 are in the design process. If all of those are finished by 2027, the agency will surpass its goal of fixing 500 bridges over that decade.

The 120 bridges added to the 10-year list go beyond that goal, Perry said.

As of July 18, 66 bridges in the state were closed, and another 594 had load restrictions, meaning they could not support large trucks, Perry said.

It’s “pretty simple math that we’ve just got to get ahead of it and get more done,” Perry said.

Closed bridges automatically jump to the top of the priority list. Emergency scenarios also come up, in which the agency has to make fixes right away, such as when a bridge on Interstate 20 closed for emergency repairs two days before Christmas last year.

Secondary roads can rise to the top of the list if the situation is dire enough, Perry said. For instance, officials rushed to fix a McClellanville bridge washed out during a storm last December because it was the only way in and out of town for about 100 people, he said.

“We made sure we got that thing open that night,” Perry said.

But the agency prefers to start fixing bridges before they become a problem, he said.

The agency’s 10-year plan was initially approved after the Legislature passed the 2017 law increasing state gas taxes and other fees to address roads that had been deteriorating for decades. The plan was updated in December 2021, after the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided an additional $1.3 billion in federal highway funding over five years.

That law also allowed for more federal money for specific projects through an application process. For instance, the department won a $175 million federal grant earlier this month to replace aging bridges over Lake Marion — the only route across South Carolina’s largest lake.

That completed the funding for a $350 million project.

State and federal gas taxes are the primary source of funding to upkeep the nation’s fourth-largest highway system. The 2017 law represented the first hike in state gas taxes in 30 years, increasing it by 12 cents over six years.

Even after that’s fully phased in, the state’s gas tax ranks 30th nationwide, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Beyond the money for bridges in this year’s budget, legislators also allocated an additional $117.4 million for the DOT’s rural road safety program and an additional $200 million to counties for local roads.

The $200 million in this year’s budget for bridgework came from accumulated surplus, so it’s a one-time allocation. But the agency has asked legislators to keep making those yearly allocations for four more years.

“Hopefully it will be a downpayment on continued investment by the General Assembly,” said Justin Powell, the state’s secretary of transportation.