The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT Claiming that many lawmakers had little or no notice of a $550 million taxpayer-backed bond plan for projects at the Port of Charleston, a senator has proposed expanding the Ports Authority governing board to include the heads of the state Commerce and Transportation departments. Besides making Commerce secretary Bobby Hitt and DOT […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In its latest annual report, the S.C. Department of Transportation claimed it patched about 679,300 potholes statewide during fiscal year 2020. Based on those numbers, an average of 14,767 potholes were filled from July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020, in each of the state’s 46 counties, though the annual report, provided […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The number of S.C. Department of Transportation employees making at least $100,000 has almost doubled since Christy Hall became the agency head, though the department’s total workforce size has changed little over the period, a review by The Nerve found. Last week, the legislatively controlled state Agency Head Salary Commission hiked Hall’s […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Some 37 years after the idea was first proposed, Interstate 73 in South Carolina exists only on paper. Yet since 2004, the state Department of Transportation has spent at least $77 million on the project – much of it for design costs and land purchases along the proposed route from North Carolina […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In January 2016, a driver swerved around a pothole on Bate Harvey Road in York County, crossed the center line and hit an oncoming vehicle, court records show. The S.C. Department of Transportation last year paid, through the state Insurance Reserve Fund (IRF), $150,000 in damages and $26,592 in legal expenses to […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The state transportation department hasn’t replaced one bad bridge with gas-tax-hike revenues collected for nearly two years – despite promises by lawmakers that the money would be used to fix South Carolina’s crumbling roads and bridges. And the Department of Transportation has completed relatively few bridge projects in recent years with other […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Too soon. Too cold. Too rainy. Too few workers. Since the state law went into effect on July 1, 2017, hiking the gas tax 12 cents per gallon over six years and increasing other vehicle taxes and fees, state transportation officials and others have offered various reasons why few of South Carolina’s […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Last fiscal year, the S.C. Department of Transportation estimated it filled more than 37,000 potholes in small, rural Kershaw County – the biggest number among the state’s 46 counties. In comparison, the pothole total was more than three times DOT’s projected number of patched potholes in Greenville County – the state’s most-populous […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Less than 4% of the nearly $1 billion in road and bridge projects in South Carolina identified by the state Department of Transportation was completed in the first 20 months of the gas-tax-hike law, newly released DOT records show. Lawmakers promised that the law, which raised the gas tax 12 cents per […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT If you ask the S.C. Department of Transportation how many potholes it fills statewide, all the agency can do is give estimates. DOT says it patched an estimated 57,300 potholes statewide from Jan. 10 to Feb. 19 at a total cost of $3.6 million, the agency told The Nerve on Thursday in […]