What the Penny Sales Tax Would Fund for Roads and Bridges
Roads & Bridges
THE COSTS OF ROADS
Greenville County maintains 1,840 miles of road, the largest county-maintained inventory in South Carolina. Our six municipalities host another 600 miles, making Greenville County the state's clear leader in total local road miles. The county's own assessment rates 60% of that pavement fair or poor. Roads in poor condition can create safety risks and add to vehicle costs. The 2025 Infrastructure Report Card | ASCE reports that driving on deteriorated and congested roads costs the average U.S. driver over $1,400 per year in vehicle operating costs and lost time.
Too, each year the cost of repairing those roads increases. That same report finds that the federal gas tax has lost 80% of its purchasing power since it was last raised in 1993. A February 2024 county assessment identified about $2 billion in resurfacing needs and $1 billion in other priority road projects. That means a dollar spent on roads does not go as far. Greenville County's paving engineer reported that the cost of paving rose from about $502,200 per mile in 2023 to $741,900 per mile in 2024.
WHAT PROJECT (1) WOULD FUND
The ballot sets aside up to $990 million for roads, the largest of the three purposes. The ordinance states that figure as a ceiling: no more than $990 million of the total collected. Spread evenly across eight years, that is roughly $124 million a year.
The ordinance lists what the money may buy: local paving, resurfacing, congestion management, intersection improvements, transportation-related drainage projects, bike and pedestrian facilities, and rural road safety projects.
The county's referendum page says state-maintained roads can be included on the project list. Its preliminary first-year list includes intersection projects on state roads and state roads to be resurfaced.
For perspective, Greenville County reported investing about $94 million a year in its roads in 2024, combining federal, state and local sources. A county assessment that February put the total work needing to be done at about $3 billion: $2 billion to fix every road rated fair or poor, and $1 billion in state, county, GPATS and municipal priority projects with no funding in place. At roughly $124 million a year, the roads share of this tax would be more than the county now spends on roads from all sources combined.
