I-385 detour: The good and the bad

By Charles Sowell  

JANUARY 15, 2010 8:21 a.m. (0)

Just over a week into the eight-month closure of northbound Interstate 385 and the effects have been mild, and in some places business is booming.

Department of Transportation officials said it is too early to have hard numbers on which detour routes most people will take over the course of the entire closure.

But Rob Perry, DOT program manager for the I-385 rehab, said preliminary figures show only 2,500 to 3,000 vehicles are following the primary detour route up Interstate 26 toward Spartanburg. About 5,500 vehicles are “going somewhere else at Route 56 outside of Clinton,” he said.

Most of them seem to be following the alternate detour through Clinton on state Route 56 and U.S. 76.

Certainly Police Commander Butch Pressley said Clinton is feeling the effects of increased traffic. “We’ve had three trucks tear the arms off railroad crossings in town trying to beat closings,” he said. “There has also been a sharp increase in trucks coming through downtown (which is prohibited).”

Tammy Lawson, filling in at the counter of a Citgo on U.S. 76 on the south side of Laurens, said last weekend’s business was so good the store’s owners had to call for extra gasoline.

“They told me they’d never sold that much gas in a weekend,” she said, peering out the store’s front windows as a steady stream of traffic buzzed by.

There have been traffic jams and many short commutes have been turned into more city-like exercises in frustration for Laurens County motorists used to a more sedate pace, said Lawson.

Truckers are upset, too, and trucking firms like Golden Strip Transfer of Simpsonville are still tallying up the damages.

“It will take us a few weeks to get a feel for how much this is costing us,” said Chris Garrett, general manager at Golden Strip. “Frankly most trucking companies operate on a razor-thin margin as it is.”

Golden Strip primarily hauls containerized freight from Charleston to Upstate customers, Garrett said. They feel the pinch of the closure with every load they bring up from the Lowcountry.

Their route to the coast is unchanged as the Department of Transportation is keeping the southbound lanes of I-385 open throughout the project to refurbish 15 miles of crumbling asphalt in Laurens County.

Depending on the load, according to Garrett’s figures, it would take three to four additional gallons of diesel fuel to travel the 17 extra miles of the primary detour route up Interstate 26 to join with Interstate 85 and motor into Greenville.

That would work out to $9 to $12 added cost per trip with diesel fuel at $3 per gallon. The total extra time, depending on traffic, is about 15 minutes, DOT’s Perry said.

Businesses along I-385 in Southern Greenville County have seen some drop in business, but not major declines said Ashley Gonzales, a clerk at a Mobile station near the intersection of I-385 and state Route 418 outside of Fountain Inn.

Part of the reason for that, Perry said, is that there are still about 10,500 vehicles a day coming into Greenville out of Laurens County on I-385. “There seems to be a lot more traffic originating in northern Laurens and southern Greenville counties than we thought,” he said.

Too, most of the traffic taking the detour route through the cities of Clinton and Laurens rejoin I-385 just east of Fountain Inn on either state Route 101 or Route 418.

There is something of an informational lag that is jinxing some travelers.

Huie Birge, an independent trucker from Indiana, was at a truck stop on state Route 72 just east of the intersection with I-385 and I-26 when he found out about the closure.

“You’re kidding, right?” Birge said when told of the detour.

He’d been making a delivery east of I-26 and had driven miles to pick up I-385 and avoid the closed portion of Interstate 40 between Asheville and Knoxville by cutting through Atlanta and then going north.

“I knew about I-40, but you mean to tell me that I-385 is closed, too?” Birge said, incredulous.

After a hurried discussion with the truck stop clerk, Birge decided to take the I-26 detour route and then cut over to Atlanta.

“It’s gonna blow the profit from this trip,” he said. “That’s just too many miles and too much time getting back to Indiana.”

He was headed for South Bend after making deliveries around South Carolina.

Traveling up I-26 toward Spartanburg, manager after manager told similar stories of irate truckers and irritated motorists.

“Most of them just take it in stride. I mean, what can they do?” said Mindy Howard, an assistant manager at the Hot Spot truck stop on state Route 146 and I-26.

Roger McCain, a Simpsonville contractor, was having lunch with his 83-year-old father, Lake McCain in the restaurant attached to the Hot Spot.

“This thing has confused a lot of people,” Roger said, nodding to his father.

“Dad and I bird hunt (quail) periodically and he drives up from Lancaster to join me,” the younger McCain said. “Dad knows how to get to Simpsonville following I-385.”

As things worked out on this day, son had to come hunting dad instead of Bob White when the elder McCain became confused while traveling through rural Spartanburg County on I-26.

The occasional stray from I-26 made it as far as Woodruff on state Route 146, said Diane Wray, manager at the Li’l Cricket at the intersection of Route 146 and U.S. 221.

“You really notice it early in the morning,” she said. “We had traffic backed up quite a bit here this morning; mostly folks trying to shave a few miles off the detour.”

Woodruff Police Chief Darrell Dawkins said his officers haven’t noticed much in the way of problems.

“Most of the people who come through here are people who know the area,” he said. “But some of them don’t and we’ve had a sharp upswing in requests for directions.”

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