SUMTER, S.C. — In Sumter, consultants are meeting with the local planning department to review feedback from a public meeting, aimed at keeping pedestrians and drivers safe along Highway 378.
“It is a major highway,” Hussain Ahmed, a business owner in Sumter, said about the Robert E. Graham Freeway on 378.
The multi-lane road is right outside of Beauty Supply & Beyond, a store Ahmed opened four years ago. Houses and apartments are on one side of the busy road, North Pike Road, with businesses like Ahmed’s on the other, South Pike Road.
“The people who live on the other side of the road and they don’t have any shopping centers on the other side, so definitely they need to cross, that’s an issue for them,” Ahmed explained. “So legally they cannot cross, but they are doing it.”
“See all these houses along here?” Sumter resident James Jenkins pointed around his neighborhood. “Well they expect people to walk all the way down to Walmart, all the way down there to Piggly Wiggly.”
Jenkins has lived in Sumter his whole life and says not having the option to cross the highway without going all the way around is inconvenient. That’s why Sumter is looking to upgrade the area with a new project proposal.
There are three proposed options for the project. The first alternative aims to eliminate pedestrian fatalities and increase accessibility by raising 378 and putting single-lane roundabouts on each road. Alternative two converts 378 to a boulevard and has pedestrian crosswalks and access to local business driveways. Finally, we have alternative three, which raises 378 and allows people to cross underneath to get from one Pike road to the other.
Kyle Kelly is a senior planner in the Sumter planning department and is working on the Connect 378 project, which had a meeting on Thursday.
“This is the first kind of true public outreach,” Kelly detailed.
Kelly says his department is not only meeting with residents in person to get feedback on the three proposed projects, but also is accepting comments online.
“We have, you know, professional engineers and professional planners that have a lot of expertise in these topics,” Kelly shared. “But we also aren't living this day to day and so where people are struggling on a day to day basis, what problems they run into…those are key pieces of information that will make a project better, and will let us know, are we truly solving a problem? Or are we misunderstanding the true scale?”
Sumter resident Tammy says learning about the potential improvements is reassuring.
“It makes me feel better,” she said. “A little more safe, especially not only for the adults, for the children too and the senior citizens.”
As far as a timeline, Kelly says his department is expecting to complete the feasibility phase this summer.
“That will include timelines for, you know, how long will it take to do the full design?” Kelly detailed. “How many months will it take to acquire any elements of right away, sections of right away they're going to need and then how long would it take to construct and that would be based on the alternative that's identified as the preferred alternative.”
When it comes to the funding for the project, Kelly says the department is not sure where it will come from yet. If the last Penny Sales Tax has passed, $6 million would have been directed to this project. While that referendum was not approved, it will be on the ballot again in November. Kelly says if the new tax is approved, the Connect 378 project “may or may not” be on the list.
Kelly says the “impetus” for this program is the numerous pedestrian fatalities that have occurred along this stretch of 378, including 9-year-old Za’Hiar Hammet, who was killed in 2022 after being struck by a car while trying to cross the road.
To provide feedback you can visit Connect378.com.
