New crosswalks to increase safety for pedestrians along Palm Boulevard

The motion and second couldn’t come fast enough in their April 28 meeting, and the subsequent work came almost as quickly, after IOP City Council unanimously approved a measure to install two new simulated brick crosswalks on Palm Boulevard.

The crosswalks were installed on May 26 at 43rd and 46th avenues by Asphalt Concepts LLC of Mount Pleasant as additional measures for increased public pedestrian safety, a growing island concern amidst heavy tourist traffic.

“These are crosswalks that access the beach – lots of people cross here all the time in very busy areas, especially in summer,” said Bryan Gawrych, co-owner of Asphalt Concepts. “The approval process did take a while, but once it was given, we got it done in four or five hours.”

The work cost $17,820, paid for by IOP City, and came after a long-simmering effort by city council to obtain consent from the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

“These were the only two crosswalks on Palm Boulevard not painted with the red brick style,” said IOP Mayor Phillip Pounds. “All this requires SCDOT approval, which takes a while, unfortunately.”

He pointed out that while the effort started with a simple email request from Wildwood area residents to paint the crosswalks and add “pedestrian cones in the middle like all the other crosswalks on Palm,” the work was delayed and the matter grew into “a bigger project which eventually took it to the Public Safety Committee.”

Once completed, the two installations brought the total number of island crosswalks along Palm Boulevard to 10, and while that might sound like a lot for such a small community, Public Works Director Robert Asero said that the absence of any of them could otherwise create some preventable accidents.

“One resident last year came very close to getting hit by a motorist at 43rd before the crosswalk was put in,” Asero said. “Trying to get from the land side of Palm Boulevard to the ocean side has been increasingly difficult due to traffic, especially at the height of the tourist season which is underway now.”

For example, IOP tourism, while always healthy in summer, is now popular year-round, with upwards of 20,000 visitors per day in peak season and 60,000 during the July 4 weekend, spread across 4.44 square miles of land.

The number of visitors is likely to keep increasing. A few years ago, the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office in Columbia estimated that by 2035, Charleston County would be home to 448,125 people – approximately 6.88% higher than in 2023.

“The amount of regional growth we’ve experienced in the past five-to-10 years has had a significant impact on the number of day visitors to the island,” said Kathryn Basha, planning director with Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments in 2023. “And this is an issue that city leaders are already grappling with in terms of parking and traffic.”

As for IOP, Asero indicated that while the crosswalks are useful, there is no substitute for people practicing simple traffic courtesy.

“My 11 drivers and temporary workers have to have constant communication between them due to the number of people walking,” Asero said. “It’s always been a major concern with us in looking out for residents and visitors on the island at any one time, especially in the summer.”
By L. C. Leach III