When Charleston annexed Long Savannah in 2007, the massive planned subdivision came with promises of developer-funded roads.

That was meant to alleviate concerns about the congestion that would come with the city’s biggest expansion since Daniel Island.

Nearly two decades later, the 4,500-home development is finally on the way — but without the “h” in “Savanna,” as The Post and Courier’s Teri Errico Griffis notes.

And without any new roads.

As Griffis recently reported, there are nearly 6,000 new housing units planned for the outer rim of Charleston’s largest suburb. Which is scary.

That's because there are no accompanying plans for new highways or parkways to handle all the new traffic that will follow. Studies suggest that many houses will add thousands of car trips to existing roads every day.

Locals are rightly concerned.

In the past few years, West Ashley has grown three times as fast as the national average, as anyone who drives around the area knows. Look at the numbers.

The S.C. Department of Transportation’s average daily traffic count for Savannah Highway between Interstate 526 and Savage Road rose by 5,000 cars — to nearly 57,000 — between 2021 and 2023.

At the same time, Glenn McConnell Parkway and S.C. Highway 61 are up 4,000 cars each.

More than 20% of West Ashley roads are over-capacity already, and all this new building isn't going to help. In fact, it’s about to bring the bustling suburb to a standstill.

There’s little DOT can do here — Savannah Highway and 61 can’t be widened, and Glenn McConnell recently got a decent upgrade. Plans call for intersection improvements throughout the area, and barriers to prohibit left-hand turns to keep traffic flowing.

Some local officials have encouraged more mass transit, and suggested more people walk or ride bikes. But Savannah Highway is dangerous enough for people in cars — a disturbing number of people often don't even brake for its numerous red lights.

All this uncertainty and overcrowding adds to the consternation of residents. They are griping pretty loudly, which is understandable.

But they also rejected plans to extend 526 onto Johns Island, which would have gotten an estimated 15,000 cars off West Ashley roads every day. Don’t expect to see those plans resurface again anytime soon.

So what’s a growing Charleston suburb to do?

Lacking any better alternatives, many folks simply blame local officials for allowing all this development without the accompanying infrastructure. Sometimes that’s even appropriate.

South Carolina is a state that foolishly doesn’t require necessary infrastructure to be in place before development like, say, Georgia.

But many of these plans — including Long Savanna, which accounts for 75% of the new homes planned for West Ashley — were approved years ago, back when the region was hungry for an expanded tax base … and long before serious gridlock was an issue.

There's one solution, which Charleston County Councilman and West Ashley native Brantley Moody explains quite well.

“Eighty-four percent of our residents leave West Ashley at 7:30 every morning and come back at 5 p.m. The longer they have to commute, it keeps exacerbating our traffic problems,” he says. “I’m an infill guy. I believe we need to build where there’s already infrastructure, where people have grocery stores, shops and restaurants nearby, even within walking distance.”

The site of the former Ryan’s restaurant and Food Lion on St. Andrew’s Boulevard (Highway 61) is the sort of redevelopment Moody is talking about.

Developers want to convert that property, just a couple of miles from downtown on a well-established thoroughfare, into a mixed-use development.

You know, like the Sumar Street plan, which the city of Charleston is shepherding along off Sam Rittenberg Boulevard. Which is an infinitely better idea than continuing to throw up new houses toward Jacksonboro.

“Somebody redevelop the Chuck E. Cheese, somebody build at Citadel Mall,” Moody says. “This is where our new development belongs.”

Not, he says, along Church Creek — where more homes only increase flooding … which in turn requires expensive fixes that take money away from other infrastructure.

The county is helping the St. Andrews Fire Department build a new station near the creek, which redevelops a property that otherwise might've been filled with dozens of new single-family homes.

That’s smart. The city and county need to do more to discourage development in such areas, mostly by encouraging it in places in serious need of suburban renewal.

All it takes is a private developer with a lot of capital and a little vision … and it really doesn’t even take much of that. West Ashley has already proved it's a popular choice for new residents.

But if its traffic woes continue, that won’t always be the case.

WEST ASHLEY — The Charleston County Sheriff's Office has released new details about a March 3 incident when a toddler was found alone in a vacant lot near a busy intersection during rush hour.

According to the incident report provided March 5, deputies responded just after 5 p.m. on March 3 after being called by a woman who spotted the child while driving to work.

The Good Samaritan stopped to take care of the toddler until emergency workers arrived. She told law enforcement the child was walking — without shoes — through the vacant lot at the corner of Old Parsonage and Ashley River roads.

The lot is across Old Parsonage Road from Wolf Track Bar & Grill and less than 600 feet from Church Creek.

The report said the child is a little girl believed to be about a year old. She was only wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a soiled diaper.

The child had some minor cuts and scratches from walking around, the report said, but no other visible injuries.

Emergency medical personnel took her to MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital. Hospital staff informed deputies that the child tested positive for fentanyl.

A Charleston County Department of Social Services worker took the child into her custody, according to the sheriff's incident report.

The child’s mother, Taylor Gallagher, arrived at the scene after the child had been taken to the hospital, according to a March 4 news release from the sheriff's office.

Both she and her boyfriend, Elio Acanfora Jr., were found to have been complicit in the lack of supervision of Gallagher's daughter. They were both arrested and charged with unlawful conduct toward a child.

Gallagher had a bond hearing on March 4 and received a $100,000 surety bond. Acanfora received a surety bond of $50,000. Both were still detained at Al Cannon Detention Center as of publication.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The Charleston County Planning Commission will be taking another look at a potential rezoning for a farmland property to allow for a multi-family residential community.

The 10-acre Storybook Farm property sits at the intersection of Bees Ferry Road and Bear Swamp Road and is currently zoned R-4, which allows for 4 homes per acre. If the rezone were to happen, it would be changed to the Storybook Farm Planned Development and would allow up to 144 housing units total.

The plans say that this will be a condominium community and include six four-story buildings with 24 units in each.

At the initial presentation to the planning commission in February, the proposal said that Storybook Farm is designed to meet the demand for both workforce and market-rate housing, with a focus on the “missing middle” price point.

The developer said that the units would be for sale only, not for rent with a goal of keeping prices attainable. He said the starting price point could be $300,000.

Proposed plans also say that 5% of the units would be deed-restricted as workforce housing, which means that those units would remain attainable even if market prices increase over time.

The proposal also includes amenities that tie in the farm property’s features. Those include a farmstand gathering space where residents will be able to purchase produce as well as community gardens where residents can grow their own plants and vegetables.

Other amenities proposed include a dog park, walking trails and enhanced parking and access for Light of Christ Ministries Church, which sits next to the property.

West Ashley resident LaDon Paige says she has lived off of Bees Ferry Road for almost 20 years and is not against development, but would like to see it done responsibly.

“I just don’t know that increasing density is going to do us any favors. We have a lot of traffic already, there are concerns with that. There is concern about losing greenspace,” Paige says. “There is already zoning in place in R-4. I am opposed to rezoning that. I think there could be better uses for that property. I don’t know what the county could do. I mean, maybe even a fire station would be great. We have that small little fire station for St Andrews, but that would be something that would not allow as much density, would not allow as much traffic, but could also be an asset to the entire community.”

Angie Murto, another long-time West Ashley resident and local realtor, says she believes that the area could support homes with the current R-4 zoning, but that the number of units proposed in the planned development is too much.

“They have the R-4 zoning there for single-family homes, four per acre, which I think we can handle that. When we’re trying to do the multi-family, I just think it’s too much density for that area,” Murto says. “As a realtor I am looking at the market all the time and you know we want development cause we need it and Charleston is a very hot place to move to but we need to do it responsibly and pay attention to the infrastructure and make sure we have enough resources for those who are coming here and those who already live here.”

Justin James grew up in West Ashley and says he has long-term concerns if more development is brought to the area.

“What is traffic going to look like right? What is all of this going to look like 10, 15 years from now? I’m going to tell you, if you think today is terrible with the amount of kids to one teacher in a classroom. If you think it’s terrible trying to get I-526 to I-26 and get to your job on time by 7:30 or 8 a.m. without leaving three hours early, it’s just going to get worse,” James says.

The public is able to fill out a survey about the potential rezoning up until April 10. You can find the link to it here.

This rezoning will be brought before the planning commission again on April 14.

Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.

There was a bad wreck on Johns Island in January, and West Ashley felt it for hours.

That mid-afternoon crash gridlocked traffic across Charleston’s largest suburb well beyond rush hour. Main roads and side streets were snarled past dark as people looked for a way home.

Because of an accident on the other side of the Stono River.

It’s happened before — once a Johns Island accident brought traffic to a standstill as far away as North Charleston for an entire afternoon. That happens in communities bisected by water with few bridges.

After the January incident, people once again called for traffic relief. It's a call that will go unanswered.

As The Post and Courier’s Ali Rockett reports, the S.C. Department of Transportation plans to upgrade some of the busiest parts of Savannah Highway and St. Andrews Boulevard (aka Ashley River Road or S.C. Highway 61).

But these upgrades will not unclog West Ashley's two major arteries.

“The point of this project is not for traffic congestion," DOT traffic engineer Josh Johnson says. “But it should make travel more reliable.”

Until, you know, somebody has a wreck seven or eight miles away.

Now, don’t blame DOT — it's doing what it can. Which isn’t much.

Savannah Highway and Highway 61 are way over-capacity for two reasons. Builders are throwing up more and more houses in outer West Ashley ... all the way to Ravenel.

More houses, more people. More cars.

Meanwhile, Johns Island has grown 150% in the past decade, and those folks have no other route to their jobs downtown and in North Charleston ... other than cutting through West Ashley.

That’s why Savannah Highway and 61 are overcrowded, and they can’t be improved much. The logistics, politics, right of way costs and disruption to existing homes and businesses make that practically impossible.

We’d have flying cars before all that, which is why even the most optimistic (or naïve) public official never suggests it.

All the transportation officials can do is try to make the roads less chaotic. So they're installing medians and making left-hand turns impossible. Which they did a few years back on Mount Pleasant's Coleman Boulevard.

Ask folks in East Cooper how they like it. Spoiler: They really, really don’t.

Johnson says the plan is to keep traffic flowing and eliminate wild west turning lanes where a lot of wrecks happen.

This means if you're headed home from downtown to Shadowmoss, you can't turn into Home Team BBQ, pick up food and be on your way.

You’ll have to go down to a designated left-hand turn lane, find a way to make a U-turn and repeat the process when you leave the restaurant.

Yeah. Angry West Ashley residents have already started a petition on change.org. Businesses justifiably fear this will lead to customers simply passing them by.

“These roads need to be wider or have dedicated turning/passing lanes, NOT concrete barriers blocking turning at all," one wrote.

This “would turn 61 into a raceway, just like the Crosstown," another resident notes. "Traffic would build up even worse with U-turn movements at lights where pavement radii are reduced to make the necessary movements.”

Fair points. But this is the future, West Ashley, and all the community meetings in the world won't change that. Because there aren't any other options.

The state and county's plan to ease congestion on those roads was to give drivers another route. But voters soundly rejected extending Interstate 526, which would've kept 20,000 cars a day off Savannah Highway.

For once, the politicians listened and abandoned the idea. But when they promise to "find other ways," be skeptical.

As DOT officials told me last summer, West Ashley doesn't get fixed with bike lanes and public transit. It needs roads, and there are no virgin swaths of land in West Ashley to build new, less expensive ones.

So, you get safety upgrades to keep traffic moving and not turning.

Now, the mobility crowd loves this. The current 61 bike lane is about as safe as passage on the Titanic, and presumably the Transportation Department will make it safer ... and improve crosswalks.

But that's about it. No magic bullets. It can tinker with intersections and signal times, but it can't lower traffic counts without alternative routes.

So, if you want to avoid the maddening congestion of West Ashley, take the Greenway. Of course, many people already complain that's a bad idea. Who's going to walk (or bike) to work in the Lowcountry heat?

Not many, based on today's numbers. But this is what the future (and alleged consensus) looks like. So look at the bright side:

When there’s a fender bender on Johns Island, walking six miles down Savannah Highway will probably be faster than driving it.

Brian Hicks is The Post and Courier's metro columnist. Reach him at [email protected].

Charleston County is set to begin construction on a project that will alleviate traffic for West Ashley and Johns Island residents, officials told residents at the first quarterly update meeting for the road improvements March 13.

The project encompasses a number of improvements to help with traffic including construction of flyovers at the intersection of Main Road and U.S. Highway 17, an interchange at Main Road and Highway 17 for drivers who want to avoid the intersection, a bridge over CSX Railroad, a roundabout at the intersection of Main, Chisholm and River roads, and a widening of Main Road from River and Chisholm roads to the interchange ramps.

The improvements were originally part of a bigger project for Main Road, from Bees Ferry Road to Betsy Kerrison Parkway. The project was then split into three segments, with this segment first estimated to cost $130 million in 2020.

This now $354 million project — the largest infrastructure project in Charleston County history — is funded by the 2016 half-cent transportation sales tax.

Herb Nimz, county project manager, said during the county's quarterly project meeting on March 13 that they're still in the permitting process, but have worked on securing right-of-way acquisition. They're also currently doing test piles, or assessing the strength and stability of the columns that will support the interchange and flyovers. Plans are in the works to relocate utilities, like Charleston Water System and Dominion Energy, before construction starts in May, he said.

Most of the road work on Main Road and Highway 17 will take place at night, but residents should still expect some backup during construction, Nimz said.

"It's going to get worse before it gets better," Nimz said.

Residents in West Ashley and on Johns Island who live around the roads slated for changes have mixed feelings.

Jacob Andrew, a Johns Island resident, said he's excited about how the road project will help with traffic.

"It’s going to work," he said. "They could get it 50 percent right, and it would be better than the way it is now."

However, he worries about how traffic volume will only continue to increase around where he lives off Main Road as more people continue to move to the Lowcountry.

Census data shows the population of Johns Island's specifically surged from roughly 15,100 people in 2010 to almost 22,900 in 2021. More than 25,000 people are estimated to live on the island today.

The county will most likely be back to the drawing board in 10 years to come up with another solution, Andrew said.

Andrew is also unhappy the county cut plans for a bike and pedestrian bridge adjacent to the Limehouse Bridge that was previously included in the project. Nimz said he's met with the state Department of Transportation and is working to add at least a sidewalk to the bridge.

West Ashley resident Jamie Jacobs is looking forward to the changes, but worries congestion may remain as Main Road and Highway 17 are highly trafficked roads for people coming from West Ashley, Ravenel and Johns Island.

Ultimately, she said if the flyovers and interchange allow for commuters to no longer wait at the red light at the intersection of Main Road and Highway 17 for an hour, residents will be much happier.

Officials expect the project to be complete late September 2028.