The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT As residents and tourists hit South Carolina roads this July 4th holiday weekend, they will contend with plenty of potholes and higher state gasoline taxes. Meanwhile, newly released records show that the S.C. Department of Transportation – the agency tasked with fixing pothole-riddled, state-maintained roads, continues to sit on massive reserves – […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT It was supposed to be a routine trip home. Phyllis Elliott and her husband, Cecil, had visited their daughter in Rock Hill last Sept. 8, and were heading back to their Lancaster home that Sunday night when their 2010 Buick LaCrosse she was driving struck a large pothole as she was turning […]

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 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 […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT State Department of Transportation work crews patched about 43,000 potholes statewide from Jan. 10 to Feb. 3 during the agency’s heavily promoted “Pothole Blitz,” DOT head Christy Hall proudly reported last week. “So a significant amount of work was done by our team,” Hall told DOT commissioners during Thursday’s commission meeting, adding, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Last June, S.C. Department of Transportation commissioner Robert “Robby” Robbins questioned agency head Christy Hall whether the worst roads in the state were being fixed. “I want a system-wide analysis of which roads are the worst, and I want money to go there first … and I don’t think we are doing […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Last week, the S.C. Department of Transportation announced it was launching a “Pothole Blitz” to repair what it contends is a growing number of potholes statewide brought on by recent heavy rains. “It is expected that these additional efforts will take several weeks before we return to normal patching activities,” Leland Colvin, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Tom Fernandez says he was just trying to make a serious point – in a humorous way – about the S.C. Department of Transportation’s pothole-repair program. On Aug. 29, DOT posted a video on the agency’s Facebook page titled, “How does a pothole get repaired?” About two weeks earlier, Fernandez, a Berkeley […]