I’d love to see a good estimate of the economic activity lost because of stopped and slowed traffic on the road to Tybee.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, traffic incidents resulted in gridlock going to and from the island.
That was in April, for goodness sake — nowhere near high summer. Fortunately, I have seen no reports of serious injuries in those accidents or whatever the incidents were.
Consider the economic impact of those long backups on that quiet spring Sunday.
Drivers burned far more gas than normal. They lost time, too, and much of that time would have been spent engaging in economic activity.
Certainly, many of the visitors on the way to Tybee were planning to spend money when they got there — on food, drink, parking and myriad other items. Some drivers simply turned around, so they didn’t end up buying anything.
With phones and new technologies, travelers can now see whether U.S. 80 is backed up even before they leave home. How many folks who had been planning a Tybee trip on that Sunday simply decided not to go?
And at what point will infrequent Tybee visitors simply quit trying to get to the island at all? And how many Tybee residents have canceled trips to the mainland? The economic implications are far-reaching, but we rightly hear even more complaints about safety issues — about the dangers of the congested road and of potential delays for emergency vehicles.
After this most recent Sunday of gridlock, Tybee Island Mayor Jason Buelterman and lots of other folks took to social media to call for government action.
Years ago, it seemed likely that we’d eventually have a four-lane road all the way from Johnny Mercer Boulevard to Butler Avenue, but the high cost was not justified by the amount of traffic through most of the year.
Perhaps it’s also worth noting the credible arguments that a four-lane road would be counter-productive because it would invite higher speeds and encourage more summer day-trippers than Tybee’s limited parking can accommodate.
Everyone seems to agree, however, that the bridges need to be replaced. Too often, the accidents, injuries and delays occur on or near those bridges, which don’t have safe shoulders.
On busy days, the passing lanes between the bridges also seem problematic; drivers speed up when they get the extra lane, but then have to slow – sometimes dramatically — at the merge points close to the bridges.
According to the “US 80 Bridges Replacement Study” prepared for the Metropolitan Planning Commission in 2010,
the Bull River Bridge has a sufficiency rating of 61 out of 100. The Lazaretto Creek Bridge has a sufficiency rating of 42.45.
In 2012, the Coastal Region Metropolitan Planning Organization presented credible designs for new bridges and for other improvements. For example, a new Bull River Bridge would have 12-foot travel lanes, 10-foot shoulders and a 10-foot multi-use path that would connect with the McQueen’s Island Trail.
The 2012 price for the improved roadway: $62 million.
I think that expenditure is acceptable simply for reasons of public safety, but one could argue that a significant amount of that money would be recouped through increased economic activity.
On the other hand, that’s $62 million to improve access to an island with a year-round population of about 3,000. There are fewer than 400,000 residents in the entire metro area.
Voters in the coastal region had a chance to mandate the bridge replacements in the 2012 TSPLOST vote, which would have instituted a 1 percent sales tax for transportation purposes. Here in Chatham County, voters opposed the tax increase by a resounding 57 percent to 43 percent.
The state of Georgia is about to enshrine a massive tax increase — about $1 billion per year — for transportation, but there is little reason to think that improvements to U.S. 80 will be prioritized. The vast majority of that additional money will go to deferred maintenance and to projects in metro Atlanta.
Despite the legitimate safety concerns about U.S. 80, many Savannah area residents don’t routinely drive to Tybee. They have other transportation priorities.
At the end of the day, those who want a safer, easier trip to Tybee will almost certainly have to support other spending that they wouldn’t prioritize. There will be trade-offs and compromises. That’s the reality of politics.
So how valuable are those better bridges to those who want them most? Valuable enough to support a local tax increase for transportation? Valuable enough to accept that taxpayers in other parts of the county have other priorities?
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.