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Traffic Congestion, Road Construction, & Improvement Projects


gman430

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I was in Greenville this past weekend, and noticed that most of the areas along the interstate look very overgrown. I think it potentially makes a bad impression on visitors. Is there anything that can be done about this, from a concerned citizens' perspective?

Contact Greenville Cares and SCDOT. Budget cuts at the state level have forced everybody to cut back on aesthetics.

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I was in Greenville this past weekend, and noticed that most of the areas along the interstate look very overgrown. I think it potentially makes a bad impression on visitors. Is there anything that can be done about this, from a concerned citizens' perspective?

I second this, with the addition of numerous places around Greenville. Church St, the recently redone stretch, already has knee high weeds growing with the center median full of weeds.

Speaking of Church St. I should give an update. All equipment has been gone for about 2 weeks now. There is three sections of the sidewalk that they have ripped up and have cones surrounding, and has been like this since the equipment was moved. It is almost like they forgot to finish. The old street lights are STILL on the telephone poles. I am starting to wonder if they are just going to leave them. There are numerous street lights that are already not working on a nightly basis. And LASTLY, It seems like they used the wrong street lights. I say this because it looks like they used the street lights that are used when they put them in areas where concrete will surround the base. There are about 6+ inch risers on the base that come out of the ground before the the bottom cover. The larger lights are not like this, it is only the smaller ones. I will try to take pictures. As much as I hoped the work would come together in the end, it has not. Even looking past the overhead wires not being buried, I struggle to give this anything higher than a 5/10.

Update on the new Certus Bank - The construction trailer is now on site. It is all the way to the road on the Church St. side which leads me to believe the bank will not be pushed up to the street, but will wait for final design before I make any judgement.

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I've been a little disappointed too in the quality of the finished product. I rode down the bike lane for the first time last week. The bike lanes seem very narrow considering the amount of traffic on the road. The right vehicle lane is much wider than the one on the left, so I don't see why the bike lane couldn't be wider instead. It was not very comfortable riding a bike on such a busy street with cars and trucks blowing by so fast. I only live a block away, but I don't think I'll be biking this street very often. I'll probably just keep riding on Jones or McDaniel to get down to the park. Overall it's better than before, but a lot of things could have been done nicer.

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The finished Church Street project is FAR, FAR, FAR removed from the excellent detail level Greenville used to be known for. I was down Church last night and details have been overlooked right and left. Just a few of the many:

- The new loose stone median with plantings already has waist high weeds growing. Hello.....anyone going to remove them?

- The grass strip between the lanes and sidewalks are seriously overgrown. Deep grass, waist high weeds. Even some weeds growing up the new lamp post.

- The old lights are STILL on the old wooden poles, some immediately adjacent to the new light poles. Will these old lights EVER be removed?

- Road signs / street signs were stuck back in the ground very random. Some are leaning, some are bent. Nothing new, fresh or exacting.

- Overhead road signs at the Augusta intersection are still on wires strung from old wooden poles.

- Some of the new lights already have broken glass lamp covers and some do not work.

On and on. This project is seriously lacking in detail. Is this the best we can expect in Greenville going forward? What happened to the Greenville that thrived on details??????

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  • City Council Meets tonight to appropriate $68k to add landscaped medians to Wade Hampton Blvd between Church St and Bob Jones.

The city needs to get the Church Street redo finished and detailed, before they bite off another project, and proceed to do it half*ss.

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I agree with you guys. This Church Street improvement project project is turning into nothing but a big joke and a waste of taxpayer dollars. I don't blame the city though. I blame the SCDOT seeing how they're the ones that were in charge of this mess. It sucks to see that the city might have to put in extra money and effort to clean up somebody else's problem.

Edited by citylife
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Update on the new Certus Bank - The construction trailer is now on site. It is all the way to the road on the Church St. side which leads me to believe the bank will not be pushed up to the street, but will wait for final design before I make any judgement.

I had posted some months back in one of these threads.....the plan I saw did NOT have the building pushed up to the street. It had parking in front and was just a typical suburban branch. How is this allowed by the city to happen, in an area like this???????

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I had posted some months back in one of these threads.....the plan I saw did NOT have the building pushed up to the street. It had parking in front and was just a typical suburban branch. How is this allowed by the city to happen, in an area like this???????

I don't remember that posting or anyone posting info. on the building, but I could have missed it. It is not zoned C-4, like the CBD is, so the design is not reviewed.

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The finished Church Street project is FAR, FAR, FAR removed from the excellent detail level Greenville used to be known for. I was down Church last night and details have been overlooked right and left. Just a few of the many:

- The new loose stone median with plantings already has waist high weeds growing. Hello.....anyone going to remove them?

- The grass strip between the lanes and sidewalks are seriously overgrown. Deep grass, waist high weeds. Even some weeds growing up the new lamp post.

- The old lights are STILL on the old wooden poles, some immediately adjacent to the new light poles. Will these old lights EVER be removed?

- Road signs / street signs were stuck back in the ground very random. Some are leaning, some are bent. Nothing new, fresh or exacting.

- Overhead road signs at the Augusta intersection are still on wires strung from old wooden poles.

- Some of the new lights already have broken glass lamp covers and some do not work.

On and on. This project is seriously lacking in detail. Is this the best we can expect in Greenville going forward? What happened to the Greenville that thrived on details??????

According to you it's John Castille's fault.

If you are upset with the quality of work contact the City and the SCDOT. And then if you feel that you still have received poor excuses and solutions contact the Greenville Journal.

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It is just outside of the Haynie-Sirrine Master Plan zone.

Shocking that this corner would be left out of the master plan zone, as this corner is a main entrance / exit to that neighborhood. So lets move on, this plot was unfortunately left out.....I thought the city had imposed other zoning criteria, citywide, a few years ago that was requiring buildings to be built up to the street?

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And LASTLY, It seems like they used the wrong street lights. I say this because it looks like they used the street lights that are used when they put them in areas where concrete will surround the base. There are about 6+ inch risers on the base that come out of the ground before the the bottom cover. The larger lights are not like this, it is only the smaller ones. I will try to take pictures.

Here's a couple of pics of the erroneous risers:

7643013950_cd582993dc_n.jpg7643015798_6afcda9f6f_n.jpg

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- The new loose stone median with plantings already has waist high weeds growing. Hello.....anyone going to remove them?

- The grass strip between the lanes and sidewalks are seriously overgrown. Deep grass, waist high weeds. Even some weeds growing up the new lamp post.

Waist high is a bit of an over statement. They are bad, but by no means waist high. I think you may be thinking some of the vacant lots on Church.

Here's a couple of pics of the erroneous risers:

7643013950_cd582993dc_n.jpg7643015798_6afcda9f6f_n.jpg

Yes.. Exactly. They look horrible. If they ordered the wrong ones, why would they install them anyway?

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Waist high is a bit of an over statement. They are bad, but by no means waist high. I think you may be thinking some of the vacant lots

Walk or jog along the sidewalk in front of the Brio. Waist high is not an over statement. Waist high, knee high, chest high....the fact is, this project was sloppy and lacking in details. The fact we are having this conversation speaks volumes as to the erosion of details in Greenville over the past couple of years. I remember a time, when I moved here, where this kind of sloppy work would not have been tolerated. The high detail level / attention to details / execution of details helped draw me to Greenville and helped Greenville stand out from other cities. For whatever reason, much of that high level expectation / execution seems to be getting lost. Will Greenville become an also ran?

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I think it bears repeating that SCDOT did this project, although hopefully, the city can decline on 'signing off' on this one, until the details are completed as they should be. It may be that until it is 100% complete that teh city can't assume maintainence. I know that sounds odd, but when you are talking about state and fed guidelines, it is not hard to imagine.

Does anyone know if this project is 'closed out' or 100% completed from DOTs standpoint?

I agree that amends do need to be made in the near term regardless.

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I think it bears repeating that SCDOT did this project, although hopefully, the city can decline on 'signing off' on this one, until the details are completed as they should be. It may be that until it is 100% complete that teh city can't assume maintainence. I know that sounds odd, but when you are talking about state and fed guidelines, it is not hard to imagine.

Does anyone know if this project is 'closed out' or 100% completed from DOTs standpoint?

I agree that amends do need to be made in the near term regardless.

SCDOT also did the I-385 widening and median planting several years ago. If memory serves me correct, the city of Greenville was involved to take the project up a couple of notches beyond SCDOT's mimimal standards. With that project, only a few trees in the median died, and those were quickly replaced. This Church Street project is just plain sloppy......yes we can blame SCDOT, but the city must have some oversight. The project is in the heart of the city and the project reflects poorly on the city, right or wrong.

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I think it bears repeating that SCDOT did this project, although hopefully, the city can decline on 'signing off' on this one, until the details are completed as they should be. It may be that until it is 100% complete that teh city can't assume maintainence. I know that sounds odd, but when you are talking about state and fed guidelines, it is not hard to imagine.

Does anyone know if this project is 'closed out' or 100% completed from DOTs standpoint?

I agree that amends do need to be made in the near term regardless.

http://dbw.scdot.org/activeprojects/ProjDescription.aspx?PC=13304&C=Greenville&TY=24

Still listed as "Active" on SCDOT, but then again they also called it a widening projected on their site so I would take any details with a grain of salt. Does have the program manager and phone number listed if anyone wants to call.

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There are a few things to remember about this project. This is US HWY 29. It is a Federal road and the work was done with federal stimulus funds, for that reason the federal government had some say in how things were done and and what rules applied. That is why some many left turns are gone becuase federal raods can't have left turns on hills. It is also why there was no street parking like what was called for in the master plan. The city didn't want to miss out on the available funds so they compromised and got what they could now. Had they not it could have been many years before the city was going to be able to fund this porject theirself.

As for the traffic lights, the old lights probubly belong to Duke Power and my guess they are waiting for Duke to get out and remove them as for the new lights, I think their is a base that still needs to be installed, but the rise you are seeing is a safty issue. It is my understand that the spacing is to insure that the lights break away if struck by a car therefor lessoning the chance of injury to the driver and any passengers in a car that might strike one. If you look at any of the new poles going up for traffic lights around town you will see that they are spaced off the ground the same way.

As for the grass, i have had the same thoughts it looks bad, almost as bad as the section of the 385 medium installed years ago that still dosen't have trees planted in it. It is an issue all over town, they make way more planted beds that they have the ability to maintain. Have you ever been to the downtown post office? All that work done on the landscaping there and then it was immedialy left to become overgrown and has never been dealt with since. Another common problem is planting new trees and shrubs and some of them die right after planing and no one ever bothers to replace them, or they get hit by cars and never replaced. But it not just greenville, its all over the upstate.

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Great to see you btoy. :) OT with the on-going discussion but bike lanes and sharrows will soon be getting installed along Anderson Street, West Faris Road, Pendleton Street, and Woodland Way.

Speaking of Faris: it's great that the City is installing sidewalks along it for the sake of allowing access to the Swamp Rabbit Trail. :thumbsup:

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In contrast, Scottsdale, AZ spends something like 15% of its budget on beautification. It's immaculate!

I love Scottsdale! Incredibly beautiful place.

Would love to know what percentage Greenville spends on beautification? Secondly, Greenville needs to realize that once an area is beautified, there must be follow up. Beds refreshed, grass cut, weeds pulled, trees and shrubs trimmed, etc. The recent trend here, is to redo an area and then forget about it.

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