COLUMBIA — Widening a 53-mile stretch of Interstate 95 through lower South Carolina is a newly designated priority for keeping freight moving safely to the Georgia border, but a start date is still years away.

While the timeline is still to be determined, work to widen the segment between U.S. Highway 17 in Jasper County and Interstate 26 in Orangeburg County to three lanes each way likely won’t start until at least 2030, S.C. Department of Transportation officials say.

That’s concerning for state Sen.Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, who questioned whether continued patchwork repairs of “the worst roadbed in the entire state” makes financial sense.

“It is literally falling apart,” he told DOT Secretary Christy Hall following her presentation to senators last week on the status of the state’s highways .

“I actually take (U.S. Highway) 15 instead of the interstate because of the potholes,” said Campsen, whose coastal district extends to Beaufort County.

“I see boat trailers abandoned on the side of the interstate because they’ve busted an axle — their springs broke — because they hit a pothole,” he added.

“You better know where the potholes are to safely drive it.

I wouldn’t dare drive 70 miles an hour on it.” DOT is “very much aware of the situation,” Hall said.

The twofold problem is unique to that section of interstate through the Lowcountry.

Regular washouts erode where the pavement connects to the interstate shoulder, plus soil that tends to stay wet undermines 30- to 50-foot slabs of concrete that rock and crack under traffic, she said.

“When these slabs break, we try to safen them up as best we can, then bring somebody in to do an overnight repair by removing that slab and replacing it,” she said. “There is some challenge in that because it seems as soon as you fix one, the next one starts to crack.”

The good news, she said, is that much of that cracking is occurring on the southernmost segment where widening work starts next year, and major repairs of the existing lanes south of the I-26 intersection are under contract.

A complete reconstruction has begun of the four lanes — two each way — between the U.S. 17 connection at mile marker 33 and the Walterboro exit at mile marker 68. It includes tree clearing for safety, patching concrete and laying asphalt on top. That work will continue through 2025, said DOT Chief of Staff Justin Powell.

Widening the first 33 miles from the Georgia border will be done in three stages, wrapping up in 2030 with a total price tag of roughly $1 billion, Hall said.

Work on the first 8 miles, to include replacing the Savannah River bridge, will start in 2024, followed by 13 more miles in 2026. Plans calls for the next 12-mile segment, from mile marker 21 to the Ridgeland exit at U.S. 17, to start in 2028.

That construction was accelerated by a $600 million infusion of state and federal money the Legislature approved last year for the DOT’s existing plan for interstate widening through rural areas.

In addition to the first 33 miles of I-95 completed at least two years ahead of schedule, a 70-mile segment of I-26 between Lexington and Berkeley counties is on track for completion by 2034 — six years sooner than projected.

Speeding up those projects allowed for more to be added to the priority list for rural interstate widening.

Last month, the state DOT Commission added three.

Ranked highest among them was the remaining 53-mile stretch of I-95 to the Interstate 26 connection, followed by 29 miles of I-95 from the North Carolina border to Florence exit 170 — the Buc-ee’s travel center exit.

Ranking third is a 34-mile stretch of I-26 from the Little Mountain exit in Newberry County to the Interstate 385 split at Exit 51.

It’s important to prioritize the movement of freight through rural South Carolina, not just urban centers, said DOT Deputy Secretary Brent Rewis.

“First and foremost, if South Carolina wants to continue to attract business and increase manufacturing, it’s imperative we have a reliable interstate system. Secondly, we need to improve safety,” he said. “We also want to make sure we have an efficient system. Hopefully, that will help lower costs from a freight perspective. It doesn’t do any good if we have commercial motor vehicles stuck in traffic.”

About 9,500 commercial trucks travel daily on the three stretches that total 116 miles.

And over the last five years, there were an average of eight accidents per mile involving commercial trucks, he said.

“The bottom line is, it’s time to expand our rural interstate program,” Rewis told DOT commissioners before they unanimously approved adding the segments to the priority list.

Their addition allows for engineering, environmental studies and long-range planning, not construction in the short term, Powell said.

“A tremendous amount of interstate work is moving forward,” Hall said. Still, legislators were hoping to hear of more work faster.

“That’s the welcome to South Carolina — at least, when you’re coming from the south,”

Campsen said about I-95. “And it’s not a very welcoming welcome mat when you’re coming from Georgia, which has great roads, and then you get to 95 in South Carolina, and it’s like no man’s land in World War I with the craters.”

Hall reminded senators that South Carolina has the nation’s fourth-largest state highway system serving the thirdfastest-growing population.

A 12 cents-per-gallon increase to the state gas tax is funding $3 billion of road and bridge work across the state.

Legislators approved the phased-in tax hike in 2017, the first for state gas taxes in 30 years. South Carolina gas taxes, at 28 cents per gallon after the increase fully phased in last July, remain 3.2 cents below Georgia’s and 12.5 cents below North Carolina’s.

“Of course, Georgia has twice the budget and half the responsibility,” Hall told Campsen.

Follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.