Grew up at North CHS and first job out of college was at Westvaco

Weird timing due to the bridge in Maryland, but looks like CHS is

Tiggity®

Oculus Spirit [97742]

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Joined: 7/13/02

Lol. They have somehow managed to screw up the biggest project.

Mar 28, 2024, 10:14 AM [ in reply to A lot of money in infrastructure it seems like. They are also redoing the ]

the $1.6 billion "Carolina Crossroads" project is dead in the water, for a while anyway.

DOT first put the project up for bids after picking a plan from among many proposals. I think they chose the cheapest, go figure. When they put it up for bids at $1.6 billion, NO ONE, not a single company, made a bid for the job. Wonder why?

Anyway, they then split the job into like 4-5 sections, and then put those 4-5 sections up for bids, and they got bidders and signed contracts. They have already started work on two sections of the project, and several bridges have already been built. BUT, the most important section, smack in the middle of malfunction junction, they learned that section would go WAY over budget because the original contract had not taken into account relocating infrastructure in the area. So they have shitcanned the most important section of the project (back to the drawing board), that all other sections tie into, until they can come up with an alternate plan. Again, they ALREADY HAVE BRIDGES BUILT to tie into a section of the project that's been put on hold.

I wish I were making this up. But, I'm not.

Oh, and the I-26 widening project going towards Greenville, the first section is complete, but it's still two lanes. Want to know why? Because DOT asked the contractor to do work outside and beyond the scope of the contract, since they were already in the area. The contractor did the work, over $3 million worth of extra work, and DOT has refused to pay them. So, the contractor is keeping the lanes closed until DOT pays what they owe.

Meanwhile, the state has $1.8 billion sitting in an account and they can't figure out where it came from?

Anyway, I'm beyond done here. I fully retract my Tennessee dig yesterday. Obed®

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SC spent two decades with some of the lowest gas taxes in the country. Problem is that tax is used to fund roads and infrastructure, and we failed to fund what was necessary for growth.

Meanwhile, decades ago GA and NC raised their gas taxes, and have spent billions more on roads than SC. And drive to NC or GA and you see the results, MUCH better roads. So the state legislature FINALLY decided to raise the tax, to match GA and NC. The gubnah vetoed the tax increase because he knew it would be overridden by the legislature, and it was. So our gas prices match NC and GA now. But our roads are still crap. Why? because for 20 YEARS NC and GA improved their roads with billions of extra dollars from their higher gas tax. Simply matching their gas tax doesn't and won't bring our roads up to par with them, it will simply stop the decline of our roads relative to their roads.

Nope, to have roads and infrastructure to match GA and NC, SC has to either raise our gas tax higher than NC and GA to the extent they were once higher than SC, OR....what we're doing, throw covid money into the pot, and maybe the $1.8 billion we found laying around.