DOT to close Cross Island Parkway’s customer service center on Hilton Head. When?
The Cross Island Parkway’s customer service center on Hilton Head Island will permanently close at 5 p.m. Friday, the S.C. Department of Transportation announced Monday.
At that time, the parkway’s website and phone numbers will be shut down. If residents have questions, they can call SCDOT at (855) 467-2368.
The Cross Island officially dropped its $1.25 fare a few days before the Fourth of July.
Signs have been at the island’s toll plaza since then to remind drivers to use caution and slow down, but not to stop.
The plaza will be removed in the coming months by an SCDOT contractor, the agency said this past summer.
The Cross Island is a common route for people who live or work on Hilton Head’s south end. Tolls were first collected on the parkway in 1998 to repay bonds that were issued to build the road, among other things.
The tolls were dropped from March 20 to June 19 last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Town leaders, including former Town Manager Steve Riley, discussed trying to drop the tolls permanently following that closure.
But Riley in June 2020 said “it quickly became apparent that we would have to find the money (to pay off the bridge), and that wasn’t in the cards for us.”
When previously asked how the SCDOT could stay on schedule and drop the Cross Island’s tolls this year, even after the three-month closure in 2020, an agency official said the project’s bond maturity date was set and, by state law, that’s when toll collections had to end, regardless of COVID-19 and hurricane evacuation toll suspensions.
