Mount Pleasant Magazine Jan/Feb2016

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health of Mount Pleasant than the two major north-south
arteries – Highway 17 and Coleman Boulevard/Rifle
Range Road. Yet as the town has grown exponentially in
recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that these
all-important arteries are no longer adequate to handle
Mount Pleasant’s ever-growing traffic issues.
Enter Billy Swails Parkway, part of a road that eventu-
ally will run from Highway 17 to Porchers Bluff Road,
going by various names along the way, including Hungry
Neck Boulevard and Sweetgrass Basket Parkway. The most
recently completed part of the road is named for the man
who served as the town’s mayor from 2009 through 2013.
All but the final segment is already in place. The
project is being completed somewhat “out of phase,” in
that the segment that normally would be built last, the
one linking Porchers Bluff Road and Hamlin Road, was
completed early to offer an additional route to the new
Laing Middle School and Jennie Moore Elementary
School. Without this option for motorists heading to and
from these large campuses, Hamlin Road would have
been overwhelmed.
Now, all that remains to be completed is the 1.3-mile
section that will link Six Mile Road and Hamlin Road.
“This last link is estimated to cost around $11 million,”
according to Town Administrator Eric DeMoura.
He said that the design phase is underway for the road-
way, and construction is anticipated to begin in the fall of
2016. The Hamlin-to-Porchers Bluff segment initially will
be a two-lane road, one in each direction, with sidewalks
and a median with palm trees, continuing the look of the
other components of the north-south corridor.
He pointed out that few right-of-way issues are
anticipated because the road will use a portion of 250
acres of recreation land owned jointly by the town of
Mount Pleasant and the Charleston County Park and
Recreation Commission.
DeMoura added that the roadway is being designed to
meander through the tract in order to impact the property
as little as possible and will have the capacity to be expand-
ed to two lanes in each direction if necessary. At present,
the completed route is expected to handle some 12,000
automobiles per day, siphoning off many of those vehicles
from the heavily-traveled Highway 17 and the Coleman/
Rifle Range corridor.
Unfunded as yet but included in Mount Pleasant’s
overall transportation plan are new or extended thor-
oughfares running perpendicular to the three north-south
arteries, DeMoura said, adding to their effectiveness
in routing traffic smoothly throughout the length and
breadth of the town.
“Conceptually,” DeMoura noted, “we’ve discussed
creating a new road next to Christ Episcopal Church to
connect with Long Point Road and extend a new transpor-
tation corridor all the way through to Rifle Range Road.”
Long-awaited by residents and travelers alike facing
increasing traffic congestion through Mount Pleasant, the
seeds for the greater Hungry Neck Corridor were planted
before DeMoura’s tenure at helm of the town.
“I credit my predecessor, longtime Town Administrator
Mac Burdette, and the elected officials during his tenure
for initiating what they then called simply the Hungry
Neck Roadway. The genesis of the project was the realiza-
tion that as the town grew, more north-south traffic capac-
ity would become a necessity.”
At the same time, town officials had run into sig-
nificant resistance to any widening of rural, rustic Rifle
Range Road.
“Also, much of the property along Rifle Range Road
was and is owned by Charleston County, not by the town,
adding another layer of difficulty to any proposed changes
in the route. Mount Pleasant’s leaders knew they had to
come up with a different plan,” DeMoura said.
He observed that any attempt to replicate the simple,
effective road patterns of the Old Village would be doomed