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Here's the number that matters on Johns Island: about 1,500 housing units are already approved between River Road and the Maybank Highway connector bridge. They're legally locked in. Nothing the city does next changes that.
What the city can change is the next wave. At its State of Our City meeting on Johns Island earlier this month, Charleston laid out a draft ordinance that would make developers prove what their project does to the surrounding roads, not just the traffic at their own driveways.
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Right now the study stops at the property line, more or less. Your new subdivision checks its own entrance and exit, and the backed-up intersection a mile away is somebody else's problem. The draft would end that.
Mayor William Cogswell pitched it as the traffic version of the city's stormwater rules, which he says are already the strictest in South Carolina. His line from the meeting, as ABC News 4 reported it: if a road is already failing, a new development has to account for that.
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It isn't law yet. The ordinance still has to go before City Council for public comment and a vote, and no date has been set.
And it has limits. Cogswell acknowledged that state law boxes in how far a city can go against projects that already have approvals. Many of those 1,500 units were approved under older growth plans that assumed the I-526 extension would get built. It didn't.
The city's case that it's been playing defense: four land decisions on the island, including the sites for the new Johns Island Recreation Center and Dale Morris Eco Park, have kept roughly 1,200 more potential units off the map.
The Post & Courier reports Cogswell also tied the idea to a state bill that would require roads and other infrastructure to be in place before development gets approved, and noted the city is rewriting its zoning code at the same time.
So what do you actually watch for? Three things.
First, the council vote on the traffic ordinance, whenever it lands. Second, the county transportation sales tax on the Nov. 3 ballot: Live 5 reports a $65 million fix for Maybank Highway and River Road, the intersection one resident called the worst on the island, is riding on it. Third, the projects already moving: the U.S. 17 and Main Road interchange is due in 2028, and a roundabout at River and Main is expected to open by the end of this year.
Not everyone in the room was sold. The Post & Courier reports at least one resident, a College of Charleston professor, said the proposals don't go far enough. With 1,500 homes already baked in, that's a fair worry.
Sources: Live 5 News (draft ordinance, road projects, sales tax project), ABC News 4 (approved units, stormwater comparison, state law limits) and the Post & Courier (state bill, zoning rewrite, resident reaction)
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