The long-awaited Lowcountry Rapid Transit (LCRT) Project, which promises a vital bus connection from Ladson to downtown Charleston’s medical district along Rivers Avenue, is heading towards its home stretch.
Promised for a few years, construction of the LCRT is projected to start in just two years, officials say. But first: One last round of design.
“I’d like to tell you it’s super sexy and exciting, but we’re actually entering the least sexy part of the process,” said Charleston City Councilman Mike Seekings, who also chairs the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority, or CARTA. “We’re finalizing the design.”
In recent years, project leaders have published several renderings and tentative design plans as the project evolved. But this year, Seekings said, the public will get more than a drawing. “It will be designed, stamped and sealed,” he said.
“It’s a pretty big year for us,” said Sharon Hollis, the senior planner of LCRT with the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments (COG). “We have the final footprint of the design ready and have already started right-of-way acquisition. Coming up in the next month, we’ll have 90% of the design plans. It’s a significant milestone.”
The routing and alignments have been done for a while, though, Seekings said. What this design phase is all about is the minutia — “Every mile, every foot, every inch of the corridor.”
Also in 2025 is the last round of virtual public meetings during which project leaders will inform the community about the project and its processes and seek feedback from participants.
“The focus of this project throughout was for it to be community driven,” Hollis said. “The decisions we’ve made were decisions we heard from community members. As this project starts to attract further development around the bus stations, it gives the participants a bigger say in what they want their communities to look like.”
Innovative retrofitting
The LCRT Project is the first large-scale mass transit project in South Carolina. By itself, it also represents a large innovation for traffic relief in the area, Hollis said.
“The Interstate 526 project was an interstate widening, but this is focused on adding an alternative mode of transportation altogether,” she said. “We’re trying to retrofit a dedicated bus lane into an already developed corridor. Every mile of all 26 miles has been challenging. … But it’s a significant investment in our region and in the Rivers Avenue corridor. Adding traffic signals, shared-use paths to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians — it’s really for the community as a whole.”
The public meetings have been a big part of ensuring the project was developed and designed with safety in mind, Seekings said. But it’s also helped to ensure the project has more than a singular focus.
“The objective is to talk about how the corridor will evolve along with the mobility side of it,” he said. “Housing is a big focus of that. This is a huge opportunity for communities to work together, Charleston and North Charleston in particular, to make sure we’re on the same page with our housing needs.”
Around the corner
The first of several virtual public meetings is open through Feb. 17 at lowcountryrapidtransit.com/tod. Community members can attend to learn more about transit-oriented development (TOD), a planning strategy focused on thoughtfully creating livable, walkable communities centered around transit stations.
Project leaders began a TOD study in 2023, which concluded last year. The study identified priorities for bike, pedestrian and infrastructure needs, affordable housing strategies and potential zoning and land uses along the LCRT corridor. The full results of the study are available to view and comment on at the virtual public meetings.
Hollis said the meetings being virtual were important for the project to maintain its community-led approach.
“We know folks can’t always come to a meeting at night after work, so we want to create a number of ways for people to engage,” she said. “We want to keep people engaged and understand what’s coming.”
Further ahead, Hollis said, construction will start sooner than many assume. “We’re looking to start construction in 2027, and that’s coming up much quicker than people think.”
Construction is currently projected to take between two and three years to complete, with a projected revenue start date in 2029.
Seekings said the LCRT project is one of the most vital transportation projects in the works at the moment in the wake of the failed Charleston County referendum that would have funded the decades-long Mark Clark extension. He added that it’s important for people to keep their eyes and ears open for what the next referendum attempt is going to look like.
“It’s got to be project-based,” he said. “It needs to be what this community collectively wants them to be — projects that are supported and will work. And it’s got to touch all corners of the county. … This all has to be agreed on, penciled out and put out into the public so we aren’t going in blind. And of course, it has to pass.”
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