Fix South Carolina’s Roads Now

South Carolina’s highways are embarrassing.
Pockmarked with potholes, cars and trucks shuck and jive to make sure they get from one place to another. On Interstate 95, vehicles bump along as if on an old washboard dirt road. When they slip into Georgia, however, it’s like starting to glide on smooth water.
For a generation, South Carolina lawmakers have underinvested in roads, causing the problems we now have from the Upstate to the Pee Dee and Lowcountry. The Palmetto State has the nation’s fourth largest road system, in part because more than 19,000 miles of local roads have been piecemealed into the state system.
What needs to happen — and what the General Assembly must focus on next year with laser precision — is a real and long-term solution to preserve the roads we have, fix the Interstates and crumbling bridges and add lanes to existing high-traffic areas to make traveling easier for commerce and residents.
You won’t like this, but it’s going to take more revenue. One way or another, it’s just going to take more money.
The S.C. Department of Transportation says state roads and bridges need an extra $42.8 billion — yes, billion — over the next 29 years to ensure that the system is in good condition. That’s the equivalent of $1.47 billion every year in recurring new money for the next three decades.
When you consider the annual budget of the highway department is $1.6 billion a year — which includes $890 million in funding from the federal government — you get an idea of how much we have underinvested in state transportation infrastructure.
State officials say transportation needs can be broken into four categories:
Preservation
The state gets the biggest bang for its buck by preserving good roads by resurfacing them to keep them in good condition. For every $1 million, the state can preserve 87 miles of roads versus rehabilitating six lane miles or rebuilding four lane miles. Currently, the state needs an extra $584 million per year to preserve existing roads, according to the highway department.
Expansion
To expand the network by adding more lane miles for widening projects, for example, the system needs an extra $352 million a year.
Routine maintenance
Rehabilitating, modernizing and rebuilding for maintenance that has been deferred too long will cost an extra $397 million a year.
Bridges
To bring the state’s 8,419 bridges into shape, the DOT says the state needs to spend an extra $71 million a year on bridges that are substandard (1,610), structurally deficient (839), functionally obsolete (771), load-restricted (398) or closed (12).
How to pay for all of this extra work every year? The litany of alternatives for a blended solution includes:
Raise the gas tax
S.C. has a 16.8 cent tax per gallon of gas, while neighboring states are much higher (28.5 cents/gallon in Georgia; 37.8 cents/gallon in N.C.). Raising the tax by a dime a gallon will generate about $350 million a year.
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Legislators could add an additional statewide tax or fee to generate more General Fund revenue, or it could gamble on an unpredictable scheme to direct dollars from growth to roads. It would have to be a significant amount, however.
Fees, tax cap
Increasing registration fees or doubling the $300 sales tax cap on vehicles would generate about $60 million each — not enough to make a big dent in the problem.
 
Raise the sales tax
The legislature also could pass a statewide special penny tax for roads, which would yield about $600 million annually. But with sales taxes already very high — and with billions of exemptions — it might be smarter to eliminate $1 billion in special interest exemptions than to raise a tax on all.
Borrow
This isn’t really an option as it won’t do the big job that’s needed and the state doesn’t have the capacity to borrow its way out of the festering problem.
“We need to have a minimum of a $600 million infusion of capital into the process — that’s a minimum of recurring dollars per year,” said state Chamber of Commerce President Otis Rawl.
Doing nothing on roads isn’t an option any more. Otherwise, we’ll lose jobs and, perhaps, lives.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.