South Carolina transportation officials want to see if new highway toll lanes from Charlotte, N.C., to the state line ought to keep going into York County, S.C.

A $3 million study by the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) will look at toll lane or road widening options from Interstate 77's Exit 88 at Gold Hill Road north to Interstate 485 just past the North Carolina-South Carolina line.

The 3-mi. stretch of freeway currently functions well on the South Carolina side of the border, state Secretary of Transportation Justin Powell told the Rock Hill (S.C.) Herald on Nov. 22, 2025. He added, though, that it may not work as well if North Carolina builds additional lanes.

"What we have begun is a discussion about ... how can we make sure that a border transition works well for South Carolinians that are going into North Carolina?" he said.

Details on the number of lanes, the costs or how the extra roadway might work in conjunction with new lanes in North Carolina have not yet been determined.

"These are the whether-the-math-works discussions," Powell said.

Charlotte's proposed $3.2 billion I-77 Express Lanes project would run 11 mi. from the Brookshire Freeway in Charlotte to the state line beside the Carowinds amusement park, which sits astride the border.

Plans call for interchanges and bridges to be reconstructed to add express lanes. The project has been more than a decade in the making, with construction contracts likely to be awarded in mid-2027.

The new express lanes, or voluntary toll lanes, would be similar to ones already operating north of uptown Charlotte.

Currently, there are eight lanes of I-77 at the state line, with four in each direction. The express lane plan would make it 10 lanes on the Tarheel State side.

That could create a potential bottleneck within 2,000 ft. of the I-77 Exit 90/Carowinds Boulevard interchange. It also is the subject of an ongoing $2 million study by SCDOT and the recipient of nearly $64 million in state infrastructure bank funding for improvements.

Approximately 40 percent of the drivers crossing the state line on the interstate live in South Carolina, according to Powell.

"My interest is in effective border crossings so that right now the morning backup doesn't get flipped to an afternoon backup," he said, "which is what we're headed toward with the current plan."

South Carolina Has History of Roadway Border Problems

Interstates dropping their lane counts can quickly cause a myriad of traffic headaches, the Herald noted.

South Carolina's most notorious interstate highway border site, Powell said, is I-95 at the Georgia border.

That state widened its side of the interstate to eight lanes south of the Savannah River without any upgrades being made in South Carolina. An ongoing $825 million widening project by SCDOT to fix the highway includes the largest construction contract that the agency has ever signed, totaling more than $728 million.

Officials in both South Carolina and Georgia learned from that experience and worked in conjunction for upgrades where I-20 crosses into Augusta, Ga., Powell said. He sees a similar opportunity with the Charlotte toll lanes.

"Anything that's [happening] on their side of the line is going to impact … our side of the [border]," he said.

In fact, North Carolina transportation officials reached out to their counterparts in South Carolina about project coordination, Powell added.

Already, though, a problem exists at I-485 just north of the state line where two lanes headed toward South Carolina merge into three southbound lanes.

"It's not a well-functioning transition right now," he told the Rock Hill news source. "This [Charlotte project] has the potential to worsen it."

North Carolina's interest in adding toll lanes to I-77 does not necessarily tie South Carolina into doing something similar.

"My interest is really just making sure that it works for South Carolina," Powell said.

Palmetto State's Toll Lane Plans Will Take Time

Elected officials expect plenty of interest if the project moves forward in York County, S.C., although that may not be soon, according to the Herald.

"There's really nothing substantive to talk about at this point," said Rock Hill Mayor John Gettys. "Going forward, I want to make sure that we [provide a] public comment period locally."

York County, which includes the city of Rock Hill, has seen hundreds of millions of dollars put toward interchanges in the past decade.

If the North Carolina project advances to a construction contract in two years, it could take another four or five years to build the lanes. The Charlotte effort, without any South Carolina addition, would reconfigure or rebuild 14 interchanges.

"Think how long it takes to build one [interchange]," said David Hooper, the administrator of the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study. "This is not something that's going to happen overnight."

Challenges Ahead for South Carolina's Proposals

Toll lanes into Fort Mill, S.C., located just south of the two-state border, are far from a done deal, the Herald reported. The South Carolina legislature would need to look at possible changes related to partnering with the Charlotte project, which Powell expects will happen in 2026.

The area also has the I-77 Exit 85 interchange at S.C. Highway 160 currently under construction at a cost of $147 million.

In addition, in the next 10 years or so, toll lane construction could come while Hooper's group is building the $106 million I-77 Exit 82 interchange at Cherry and Celanese roads in Rock Hill. He said it would not be feasible to have both jobs under construction at the same time.

According to Powell, the study on partnering with North Carolina on the I-77 toll lanes comes from separate funding that does not impact any other road construction jobs in the area. When the analysis is completed, SCDOT would look at designs, routes and how to make the toll lanes happen — if they prove to be workable.

"We've got to take that first step," he said.