South Carolina has the nation’s fourth-largest state-owned transportation network, but a labyrinthine project-upgrade priority system has hampered the state Dept. of Transportation’s ability to keep roads and bridges from worsening over the past decade, state auditors and Transportation Secretary Christy Hall testified on April 7.
The state General Assembly’s audit evaluated SCDOT’s management of 41,000 miles of roads and 8,436 bridges—work that was affected by a 2007 agency restructuring that mandated new ways to prioritize projects. Since 2008, it found 54% of South Carolina’s primary roads rated in poor condition, up from 31%. Similar increases were recorded for secondary roads. The audit criticized apparent inconsistencies in how the DOT prioritizes projects and called for a more transparent process organized around a central ranking list.