Proposed SELL(Storm Evacuation Life Line) Road south of Myrtle Beach

[74/171FAN]

Officials in the Myrtle Beach area want a privatized toll road connecting US 501 at SC 22 to the Surfside Beach and southern Grand Strand area South Carolina evacuation highway suggested for toll financing

Honestly, I don't think this road would relieve US 501 that much since the planned routes are quite south of Myrtle Beach itself(I personally don't know how bad the traffic is on SC 544).

[Chris]

I suppose the tolls are waived in case of a hurricane evacuation?

How often is the South Carolina coast evacuated due to hurricanes anyway? I thought they most hit Florida and the Gulf coast.

[dfilpus]

I suppose the tolls are waived in case of a hurricane evacuation?

How often is the South Carolina coast evacuated due to hurricanes anyway? I thought they most hit Florida and the Gulf coast.

There is at least one hurricane evacuation per season on the Grand Strand. The Carolinas are targeted every year because they stick out into the Atlantic. Often, a hurricane will approach Florida, then turn north and follow the coast. As it heads north, it causes evacuations all along the way.
I 40, which is the major evacuation route out of Wilmington NC is built to reverse the inbound lanes all the way out to I 95.

[InterstateNG]

Apologies if this is off-topic, but in a contraflow situation, is there a big bottleneck where the contraflow ends and if not, why not?

[dfilpus]

The contraflow on I 40 from Wilmington ends just before the I 95/I 40 interchange which has interstate capacity in three directions.

[Chris]

Most evacuations from large cities end up in chaos anyway. I guess most of you still remember the Rita evacuation in Houston and Katrina evacuation in New Orleans. Even 12 lanes in one direction cannot handle a major cities emptying in a few hours. One lane has a throughput of about 2,000 - 2,200 vehicles per hour. If hundreds of thousands of people decide to leave within a time-frame of a few hours, all in the same direction, you'll get chaos no matter what.

But I guess it is not that big of a problem given Myrtle Beach is not that big.

[Alps]

The contraflow on I 40 from Wilmington ends just before the I 95/I 40 interchange which has interstate capacity in three directions.

I don't see the end on aerials - where do people cross back over?  Seems like you would indeed have a bottleneck if it's before the interchange because you still just have two WB lanes until the ramps start.

[dfilpus]

The contraflow on I 40 from Wilmington ends just before the I 95/I 40 interchange which has interstate capacity in three directions.

I don't see the end on aerials - where do people cross back over?  Seems like you would indeed have a bottleneck if it's before the interchange because you still just have two WB lanes until the ramps start.

The DOT has a poster http://www.onslowcountync.gov/...Services/.../I40_Lane_Rev_Poster.pdf which shows that NC 96 is part of the evacuation route. It looks like they shunt traffic from both sides of I 40 onto NC 96. Then they merge both sides of I 40 to one lane and then merge the counterflow lane into the westbound lane before the I 95 interchange. They show that about mile 331. http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.355479,-78.483096&spn=0.000874,0.001228&t=k&z=20
There are places along I 40 where you can see signs for the counterflow traffic. Milemarkers have numbers on both sides.