Designated rideshare pick-up and drop-off zones considered for King Street area
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The City of Charleston is getting ready to test out five new rideshare drop-off and pick-up zones in the Upper King Street area.
“Designating spaces along King Street seems like a natural thing to do. It’s done in many entertainment districts around the country. Airports do it. Sporting venues do it,” said Charleston City Councilman Mike Seekings, who also serves as the chair of the Traffic and Transportation Committee.
On Tuesday, the committee voted in favor of rolling out the pilot program which is projected to begin May 1st if fully approved by Charleston City Council. The program would establish five designated pick-up and drop-off zones for Ubers and Lyfts between 6 pm and 3 am.
John Street, Radcliffe Street, Morris Street, Woolfe Street, and a stretch of King between Cannon and Spring Streets will have several meter spaces and loading zones open for the cars to pull over.
Both drivers and riders will be directed to a specific pick-up point through their app. The city is also planning to install signage to help guide the way.
“Between the app and the signage, it should really be very obvious where to go,” Councilman Seekings said.
Paul Binion is an Uber driver and represents the South Carolina market for Uber Crew. He told News 2 he has a number of concerns with the proposed change and said drivers should have been included in the conversation.
“There’s going to be a really, really fast bottleneck happening on some of those side streets because you’re going to end up with five or six Ubers stopping to pick people up and traffic is going to back up on King Street,” Binion shared.
This factor will be taken into consideration by leaders as the pilot program gets underway.
“One of the things we are going to keep a very close eye on is does it back traffic up? For instance, if we’re on a side street, Radcliffe Street, does it back traffic up into King Street? Things like that. We will monitor that,” Councilman Seekings said. “The nice thing about rideshare is because you track it on your device, you see when the ride is coming so, rides, individually, should be pretty seamless.”
The other component of this effort is to amend a current city ordinance which prohibits rideshares from picking up and dropping off on King Street from 12:30-3:30 am on the weekends, however, the rule has not been enforced.
The pilot program will go to city council in two weeks for first reading.
