Traffic was bad in Blythewood SC before Scout. Will it get even worse?

It could take five minutes, it could take 30. Liz Humphries can never be sure how long the commute will take between home and work. Traffic has gotten bad in Blythewood, residents seem to agree.

“It’s just growing so fast,” said Humphries, owner of Blythewood Consignment. “To go to the grocery store you have to wait in traffic.”

It wasn’t always like this. Fewer than 1,000 people lived in the small farm town northeast of Columbia in 2000. But as the area around Blythewood grew, and as more and more people noticed the quiet, idyllic community, more people wanted in.

Between 2010 and 2020, the town grew 136% and today is considered the 5th-fastest growing municipality in South Carolina, with just over 5,000 residents now.

Blythewood was already feeling growing pains. Now, as Scout Motors prepares to build an electric vehicle plant in town and employ 4,000 workers, people worry the traffic problems will only get worse, hampering essential services in the process.

A new neighbor

A Virginia lumberman wandered into Humphries’ shop one day and she knew it had begun.

He was there cutting timber to prepare land for the new Scout Motors plant, which promises to produce 200,000 electric trucks and SUVs each year.

What that level of production will mean for the town of Blythewood remains unclear.

“I think it’s going to be huge,” Humphries said. “It’s going to be just crazy, there’s no other way.”

Gov. Henry McMaster announced in early March that Scout Motors, backed by Volkswagen, would be building its first ever production plant in a 1,400-acre industrial park in Blythewood, northeast of Columbia.

The plant is supposed to be up and running by the end of 2026.

Bythewood residents have shared mixed reactions to the project. Some think it will be good for business, others are wary about how it will change their rural community.

Most people do however seem to agree that traffic is going to be a problem.

At least some of the 4,000 new employees will likely want to live in the Blythewood area, and depending on how many employees Scout expects to work per shift, the roads around the plant could get congested fast.

South Carolina has already offered to build a new interchange on I-77 halfway between exits 24 and 27 to help workers access the site, and to make it easier for the company to ship materials via truck. That offer was part of the state’s $1.3 billion incentive deal given to Scout Motors.

The state is still assessing whether that interchange will be necessary, said Christy Hall, South Carolina Secretary of Transportation.

“We feel fairly confident it will require a new interchange,” she said. “A development of this size, even without knowing the exact details of how many shifts…. how many trucks ….we know that the existing interchanges would struggle to support that development.”

But state officials won’t know exactly what work needs to be done until they’ve finished collecting data from Scout on everything from how often the company will ship materials via truck versus rail, how many employees will be entering the facility at any given time and a slate of other details needed to determine traffic patterns.

Some local work is certain though:

-Scout has promised to improve the intersections leading to the plant, Richland County Economic Development Director Jeff Ruble has said. The existing I-77 interchanges at Blythewood Road and at U.S. 21 will also see improvements, Ruble added.

-In an unrelated project, construction is underway on Blythewood Road, which is being widened to four lanes between I-77 and Syrup Mill Road as part of the Richland County Penny Tax program.

-Community Road is also set to be widened to four lanes, Ruble has said, as it’s expected to see traffic from Scout employees entering and exiting I-77. Scout hopes the bulk of that traffic will be kept to the new I-77 interchange, and to a road extension between the new interchange and US 21.

-There will be an entrance to the plant at Syrup Mill Road, but most employees will enter the site at an entrance on Community Road.

Scout, as well as state and local officials, have stressed they believe the road improvements will ultimately benefit Blythewood residents, and at the very least won’t add to the town’s existing traffic woes.

Mounting traffic delays

The traffic problems in Blythewood have been mounting for years. It’s not hard to guess why. All around Blythewood are large vinyl signs advertising new housing subdivisions, or land that can be turned into new housing.

Columbia-Richland Fire Battalion Chief Tyler Gladden oversees emergency services in the Blythewood area and agrees traffic has gotten bad in parts of town.

For the most part, traffic hasn’t caused any major problems in emergency situations, Gladden said, but it can be dicey navigating in rush hour traffic, especially when drivers don’t stop and pull over to let emergency vehicles through.

Gladden couldn’t say what the new Scout plant might mean for emergency response times.

“That is going to create a lot of new challenges,” Gladden said of the new plant. The road work to build the interchange will be one thing, but the project also includes adding a rail spur to the Scout site, and trains can cause long delays in fire and EMS response, he said.

In the past, the fire department has been involved with the Department of Transportation and other local officials to prepare for detours and other things related to road work.

In 2018, the town commissioned a traffic study that showed even at that time, the situation in Blythewood was tenuous.

Sections of Blythewood Road at U.S. 321 and I-77 particularly struggled with congestion during peak hours, that study showed. Intersections at Blythewood Road and McNulty Street, and U.S. 21 and Community Road, had the highest delays at peak times, with five minutes or longer wait times for drivers trying to get through those intersections. And that was five years ago.

In the last 10 years, the amount of traffic on Blythewood Road between I-77 and U.S. 21 to access the interstate has more than doubled, from 10,400 average daily traffic users in 2012 to 20,900 in 2022, according to state Department of Transportation data.

Wait times at certain Blythewood intersections can last 30 minutes or more, residents say.

Residents in local Facebook groups share stories of school buses stuck in traffic for half an hour. Langford Road, a main artery leading to numerous schools, can get backed up so badly people sit in traffic for 20-40 minutes.

In a March interview with WIS, Scout Motors’ CEO Scott Keogh stressed the company wants to manage the “busy” construction process in a way that doesn’t add to Blythewood’s existing concerns.

“It’s obviously going to be a lot of trucks and a lot of infrastructure,” he said in that interview.

He promised to listen to the community’s concerns, and added he hopes the new interchange and other investments work to address the traffic issues.

“We’re going to have to do this together,” Keogh said. “We’re going to have to be respectful… The last thing we want to do is disrupt and annoy … the very community we want to love and embrace us.”