Bus Stops for Riverland Drive and Central Park Road on James Island

Bus Stops for Riverland Drive and Central Park Road on James Island

Tri County Link Route through James Is.

Despite service reductions on Riverland Drive South of this intersection, this area continues to have very active bus service.  Tri County Link operates six runs a day from Johns Island to the City on weekdays, stopping in both directions in this area (see route at right). CARTA Continues to operate 11 runs a day on Weekdays and 9 Saturdays and 8 Sunday, servicing the area with the Folly Road bus only on the Southbound, outbound service towards Sol Legare Road. (See CARTA route below) For our area, this is fairly frequent bus service. Six runs towards Charleston are available between 5:00 pm and the end of bus service for the day, connecting at the James Island Walmart parking lot with service on the Folly Road and #1 Express to Charleston.

Some sort of a transit hub is needed for James Island near that location on Folly Road.
All buses in the area operate on both Central Park and Riverland Drive (North of the Intersection) so the placement of stops can be flexible, provided the pedestrian crossing is a safe one. Stops should be placed close to the intersection since foot traffic will be traveling to the area from the South on Riverland Drive, but placement is somewhat flexible.

Folly Rd. CARTA Route

If tree free space for bus pullouts isn’t available, ordinary stops with shelters or benches would be sufficient at this location. The stop on the West Side of Riverland or the South Side of Central park would be the most important and busiest one since both the LINK and CARTA bus stop traveling in that direction, South on Riverland and East on Central Park. The standard new bus shelter recently adopted by CARTA with solar lighting would work fine at this location, they’re compact and work well in limited space.

Based on our visits to the community, there is a lot of confusion about where the available bus services go. There is very little awareness of the now available electronic wayfinding available on Smart Phones and the internet.

After a full year of involvement with this seemingly unending community fight over the design of this intersection, including a full door to door canvass of the surrounding area and attending five meetings, we recognize the markings of failure which must arise from a community fixated on cars and traffic. Democracy doesn't work. Citizenship doesn't work. Government doesn't work.

James Is. Bus Stop on Folly Road, Walmart

Watching a community trying to solve traffic that is unable or unwilling to recognized the car as the problem is wasteful and sad. Only the realization that hundreds of people living in this area depend on or would like to ride transit motivates us to continue our involvement. Nothing can save a community obsessed with the desire to move cars quickly to the exclusion of every other value except preserving the trees they experience only in passing through a car window. The absurd faith that I526 will solve the island's problems is even sadder. This area is fated to the same destiny as every other Interstate access in America, congested traffic, highway style development and a decline in community values. Nothing in this process indicates anyone involved really understands James Island's problems, which arise from and cannot be solved by building more and wider roads. 25 years after the James Island Connector opened, nothing has been learned because nobody wants to think about anything but ways to move more cars faster.

That is why people on James Island continue to die in the unending sequence of car wrecks, cyclists killings and pedestrian run downs.

We believe a modestly scaled effort with some community support, utilizing safe, comfortable stops would yield increased transit ridership in this area. We’re already working to build ridership on Johns Island on the Link Route which runs through this intersection. 12 times a day.

We take no position on which intersection design needs to be adopted. We do however point out that this is a classic example of how autocentric long term planning divides our communities. We know transit brings communities together as properly placed bus stops will do here.

William Hamilton
Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit
(843) 870-5299 or wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
March 13, 2019