Greenville officials plan safety improvements for one of the city’s busiest roads

City officials held their final public meeting Tuesday about a safety improvement plan for Augusta St. in Greenville.

The plan aims to create a safer driving and walking experience for Greenville residents. Augusta St. is considered a “high crash corridor.” The Augusta St. Safety Improvement plan intends to combat vehicle and pedestrian accidents along the road. From 2017 to 2019, the area of road that stretches from Mauldin Rd. to East Augusta Place had 235 vehicle incidents and two accidents that involved a pedestrian or cyclist, according to data provided by the city.

After the city implemented a road diet and consolidated lanes on Augusta St. in 2021, the road had 44 vehicle collisions in 2022 and 46 in 2023.

“We’ve had a number of accidents in this area. You can see some of the improvements that have been made with our initial road diet project and how that has helped in reducing some of the accidents on this road,” Greenville Director of Engineering Services Clint Link said. “Cars were right up against the sidewalk and there were no turning lanes. We’ve seen a tremendous improvement already with what we’ve done. We expect to see that same level of enhancement.”

The city intends to improve conditions on Augusta St. by improving intersections, signal timing, enhancing sidewalks for pedestrians, adding landscaped medians, repaving the roads and doing underground utility work. Some intersections will have right-turn to merge lanes replaced with a right-turn only lane. The goal of these changes is to create fewer contact points for vehicles and help incentivize drivers to be more cautious, Link said.

What changes are expected for Augusta Street?

During the meeting, city officials displayed a PowerPoint presentation of their plan to improve road infrastructure from Augusta Place to Church St. Those improvements will include underground utility work, sidewalk improvements, signal timing improvements, an extended median, an extended merge area and the addition to a left-turn lane onto Oregon St. Officials are also focusing on Mauldin Rd. to Augusta Place. In that area, officials will add street resurfacing, sidewalk repair, extra streetlighting, driveway consolidation and add a right-turn lane at Old Augusta Rd.

Link said that the city identified the improvements for each area differently and conducted studies on what each part of Augusta St. needs. “We really are trying to match the needs of each road and the properties or businesses along it. We want to match the unique characteristics of the different types of intersections that you may have and what can be done to make those intersections safe,” Link said.

What are the next steps for the plan?

According to Link, the city’s next step is for additional engineering where they will add input received from the last meeting. He said officials will go through the final engineering design, get permits and budget information for the project. There is not a set time frame for the project’s completion. The preliminary cost for construction for underground utilities for certain areas of the road is around $8 million, Link said. Link said once the project is completed, drivers and pedestrians should expect better roadways and safer sidewalks.

“We want it to be a nice, enhanced corridor that serves the needs of the community and it’s safe to drive along and walk around,” Link said.

Residents who attended the meeting voiced concerns that the changes won’t actually fix the problem of heavy traffic. “I don’t know if what they’re planning on doing is going to actually work,” Greenville Resident Libby Patterson said. “The traffic has gotten worse over the past five years and driving here has gotten impossible.”

Link said the studies conducted on the road accounted for traffic and that they wouldn’t make changes that will make road safety worse. “We’ve done extensive traffic analysis of the road. Our road safety recommendations are in line with the analysis we’ve done, and the road will continue to function at an acceptable level of operation and service. We would never want to propose improvements that would be to the detriment of more congestion or unsafe traffic conditions,” Link said.