City searching for pedestrian Safety and parking solutions
By Bill Davis | Current Staff Writer
Tackling two of Folly’s pervasive problems — keeping pedestrians safe and finding enough parking for everyone — isn’t going to be easy.
Walking Paths
Just like it takes breaking a few eggs to make an omelet, Folly is going to have lose some parking spots to make a pedestrian path to the Pirates Cove Playground and Skate Park from Center Street along E. Hudson Avenue.
The path has been an idea that’s been kicking around City Council for years. Council reviewed the plan last in early June, and said the plan needed more work, and sent it back for more engineering. It’s since come back and is now in the “stakes and ribbons” phase.
The basic idea is to create a path on one side of E. Hudson Avenue and use it as a guinea pig of how the city could expand the idea to other streets and areas on the island.
Initially, the path would be constructed of a pervious material (vs. impervious) that will allow stormwater to wash away, while still being firm enough to push a stroller down.
Mayor Tim Goodwin says that it “depends on where you put the paths as to how much parking you lose; we’re trying to pick areas that will lose the least amount of parking.”
Goodwin says there are a myriad of potential small problems that could pop-up, and that’s what the first path will help them define.
According to the mayor, one issue sure to come up is that some of the older homes on the island are built closer to the road, instead of being centered in the middle of their lots. Because government’s right-of-way extends 25 feet out from the center of the street, that could mean less land to work with when setting up paths.
“I told people on W. Ashley Avenue to go home, stand in your front yard, and find a telephone or phone box … or a fire hydrant” which would show them how far into their yard a path could be built, according to the mayor.
“We’ve been working on walking paths for a long time; the hard part is deciding whether they should be 6 or 8-feet wide,” says Goodwin. “Will we have to gos down to 3 or 4-feet so we don’t have to cut a Grand Oak down or making sure we aren’t getting up into somebody’s front door.”
And beloved begonias could also be sacrificed, as landscaping isn’t protected in the right-of-way.
Baby Steps
Newly-minted City Councilwoman Amy Ray recently scored her second political victory, as the state Department of Transportation (DOT) has agreed to lower the speed limit island-wide to 25 mph. (Goodwin says the signs will go up as soon as SCDOT sends them.)
Ray acknowledges that the path initiative pre-dates her civic involvement but notes that it represents a continued dedication to make Folly more pedestrian safe.
“Unfortunately, some parking will be taken away,” she says, calling the effort, if successful, “baby steps.”
Ray says she welcomes feedback from the whole community, and not just those who agree with her.
“We have to try to get to a solution that works for everyone — residents, visitors, people who want to park, everybody,” she says, adding that while the initiative was in its pilot phase, “everything will be up for discussion.”
Park-and-Ride
The second issue rearing its head once again is the idea of creating and coordinating a park-and-ride system where people working in hospitality could park their cars in a lot on James Island and then take public transport onto the island.
Lewis Dodson, president of the Folly Association of Business (FAB), says that one of the restaurant groups on the island reached out to his organization to see if a program like this could be resurrected.
There have been at least three attempts to partner with CARTA on Folly, none of them have been very successful.
Dodson sees a park-and-ride program as a partial solution to the hiring crisis many hospitality businesses in the area, and on Folly, are experiencing.
He casts the program as a “workforce preparedness” issue that would help local restaurants and hoteliers tap into workers from a larger area, namely West Ashley and downtown.
“Not every capable employee has a car,” says Dodson, who runs businesses on Folly and in West Ashley. And the ones that do sometimes find a parking nightmare when they get on the island, depending when their shift starts.
But, Dodson warns, one bus running every few hours might add an hour or two onto the commute of an employee, rendering it less advantageous.
City Administrator Spencer Wetmore and other city officials met the last week of June with officials from CARTA, and the Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments, which oversees the bus system, to discuss possible solutions. The city also solicited input from Folly business owners.
Wetmore says that a spot like the one used in the past at the James Island Wal-Mart could be a park-and-ride site.
