Letter | Surfside Beach area traffic jams have got to end; here’s how to do it

Surfside area traffic jam solution

As a resident living in the Surfside Beach area, one cannot help notice the ever increasing traffic jams on S.C. 544 between the Wal-Mart traffic light and the McDonalds, which takes place year round.

The first thing the Department of Transportation could do is program the lights for a smoother traffic flow. None of these lights are in sync to help traffic flow smoothly in either direction, and a simple and inexpensive short-term solution would be to re-program these lights, which would help significantly.

Recent commercial development over the past 2 years, along with continued commercial development, has no doubt caused this problem.

The long-term permanent solution is to make the S.C. 544-U.S. 17 Bypass intersection a figure 8 cloverleaf. This construction can be done for a fraction of the cost of an overpass and will ease a rapidly increasing bottle neck in this area.

This story was originally published May 4, 2015 at 8:54 AM with the headline "Letter | Surfside Beach area traffic jams have got to end; here’s how to do it."