Getting Answers: Rogers Rd

PELZER, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Fox Carolina is committed to getting you answers about roads around the Upstate.

Several viewers wrote in telling us about Rogers Road, located off I-85, near Highway 29 in Pelzer.

You told us the road, maintained by Anderson County Roads and Bridges, is riddled with potholes and patches.

“I have hit some hard ones and I’ve wondered if it’s knocked it out of line,” Thompson Smith said, “There’s some pretty hard hits going down through there and I know good and well it’s not doing my tires on my vehicle any good.”

Smith lives on Rogers Road, not far from his childhood home.

“I start trying to dodge potholes and I’ll go to the left lane and then I’ll straddle the middle line to avoid potholes,” Thompson Smith said, “Sometimes I meet traffic and I got to hit some of them and it’s basically like playing dodgeball.”

Another driver, Eugene, wrote in sharing his concern, “Huge potholes on this road busted my tire.”

Anderson County said many of the old farm roads, like this one, are deteriorating. With only a thin layer of asphalt covering the gravel, these roads weren’t made for heavy traffic.

“This road was originally a dirt road before my time, but it was all tar and gravel when I was a young boy and then they finally paved it,” Smith said, “There’s not a real base under that road to support the kind of traffic that it’s experiencing now.”

About 1,100 cars travel this road daily. Thompson said he remembers a time when only a handful of cars took this road every day.

Two new neighborhoods just went up, adding to the traffic.

“The land right beside us over here, they got about 130 new homes in there and across 29 over here about 100 homes that they put in,” Smith said, “A lot of those use this road.”

The added traffic is causing massive craters and obstacles for drivers.

“The roads kind of got destroyed during the construction process when they were bringing concrete trucks and dump trucks and heavy equipment in and out,” Smith said, “the county has done little except a little patch, throw a little asphalt in there.”

Kimberly agrees, writing in, telling us, “The crews keep just covering them with asphalt and it has to be redone a lot. Why not completely fix it?”

“The county needs to plan and improve the infrastructure before they approve all these developments, but since they can’t plan ahead, since it’s already happened, what they need to do is get in here and figure out how they gonna really fix the road.” Smith said.

We asked the county if crews have plans to fix the crumbling road and found out no upcoming projects are scheduled at this point. The county does not have the funding to cover it.

We will continue following up and working to get answers.

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