‘It affects all of us.’ Should this increasingly busy Midlands country road be widened?

With a prominent and frequently gnarled Lexington intersection set to be untangled in the near future, local officials are turning their attention to one of the corridors that feeds into that project.

The Central Midlands Council of Governments is in the midst of a feasibility study aimed at figuring out what might be done to improve Corley Mill Road. The well-trafficked two-lane stretch connects North Lake Drive/S.C. 6 to Sunset Boulevard/U.S. 378, where the $35.6 million Sunset Split project will look to ease congestion caused by Sunset’s close-by intersections with Corley Mill and Interstate 20.

Corley Mill, along which sits River Bluff High School and its more than 2,100 students, is a point of public contention, with prevalent frustration with traffic along the road matched by fears that widening it might draw still more traffic to the busy country road.

Britt Poole is the executive director of the Central Midlands Council, which helps officials in the counties of Fairfield, Lexington, Newberry and Richland develop local and regional plans. He said the contentious opinions surrounding Corley Mill are why the feasibility study emphasizes public input, with an online survey ongoing through Aug. 15 and an event held earlier this month soliciting community feedback.

“I don’t know what the breakdown is going to be, but I can tell you that we got very good participation,” Poole said. “It won’t surprise me if it’s like 50-50 — 50% of the people want it widened and 50% don’t want it touched. So there really is no result that I’ll be surprised by, because there are some very strong feelings on all sides about that roadway in particular.”

A busy country road

There’s ample data to suggest that upgrades along Corley Mill might be necessary.

Per the S.C. Department of Transportation, Sunset Boulevard, which connects Lexington and West Columbia and crosses Interstates 20 and 26, sees more than 40,000 cars each day, while North Lake Drive, which carries traffic between Lexington and Irmo over the Lake Murray Dam, sees nearly 30,000 cars.

Corley Mill isn’t as heavily trafficked as those four-lane highways, but it sees more than 10,000 cars per day along its main stretch, with nearly 14,000 reported near its intersection with Sunset Boulevard. Together, the stretch of Corley Mill leading up to North Lake Drive and Andrew Corley Road, which splits off of Corley Mill and intersects with North Lake closer into Lexington, see more than 11,000 cars.

Per the Central Midlands Council, more than 400 crashes causing property damage occurred along Corley Mill and Andrew Corley Road between 2019 and 2023, with nearly 70 crashes resulting in injuries and one resulting in a fatality.

“I definitely think it can be improved,” said Lexington Town Councilwoman Jeannie Michaels, who attended the public meeting held as part of the study.

At that session, attendees were able to ask questions of the engineers conducting the study and affix their thoughts to large maps of Corley Mill Road using post-it notes.

Both Michaels and Glen Conwell, a Lexington County councilman who represents a large portion of Corley Mill and who also attended the meeting, were encouraged by the large turnout and interest shown by the community. They also both said constituents they talk to are divided.

Conwell noted that many people he has spoken with don’t want to see four lanes for fear it would cause the road to become more increasingly used — and potentially do away with the corridor’s pleasant tree canopy. He called this perspective the “general consensus.”

Ideas to improve

Both council members said adding and improving turn lanes would be prudent. Michaels said adding roundabouts, while expensive, could be a good option, and Conwell said that he talked with several people who expressed a desire to see them added.

The ongoing public survey asks for thoughts on options that range from adding turn lanes to increasing Corley Mill to four lanes. All of the options include either a combination of bike lanes and a sidewalk or a 10-foot-wide shared walking and bike path, in accordance with SCDOT policy aimed at ensuring access to safe routes to schools. There are currently no bike lanes or sidewalks along Corley Mill.

Poole, the Central Midlands Council’s executive director, noted that the width of the public right of way and how feasible and expensive it will be to carve out additional land along the road could limit the scope of potential improvements.

Michaels and Conwell both noted that funding could be another difficult point to figure out.

“It just takes a lot of money to do anything we want to do,” Michaels said. “So we need to try to figure out at some point how we can get that on our list of to-do’s and improvements, and how we go about getting the money to do it.”

Conwell said this is the kind of project that would have benefited from the penny tax for road improvements that county voters shot down in 2022. Having those funds to put up could help get funding from other sources, Conwell said.

“I work over in Richland County, and every time I go over there, if I have to get gas, I’m paying their penny sales tax, and we’re one of the only counties around that don’t have one,” Conwell said. “The Department of Transportation likes everybody to have skin in the game, so if we’ve got money to partner with them, they’ll come with us and help. It’s a lot easier if you’ll partner with them.”

The town of Lexington partnered with the state for Sunset Split, getting $16 million to help fund the project. Currently slated to start construction in early 2026, it will split Sunset Boulevard on the Lexington side of I-20 into separate multi-lane paths going east and west, moving the Corley Mill Road intersection and adding five new traffic signals to help manage traffic.

Both Conwell and Michaels said they’re glad the Corley Mill study is happening at a time when it can take the potential impacts of Sunset Split into account.

In the near future, the Central Midlands Council will commence two more feasibility studies looking at improving traffic in Lexington County, one aimed at North Lake Drive and another targeting issues in the western part of the county.

“It affects all of us,” Michaels said of traffic in the county. “We talk about this often as Lexington Town Council members, how county roads, how state roads, they all affect our traffic and our citizens’ traffic, and we want people to come into the town of Lexington and shop and dine and enjoy what we have. So it affects everybody. So any studies that can be done and any improvements that can feasibly be done, I’m all for them.”