How Would You Fix Highway 61?

CHARLESTON - Wes Walker, like pretty much everyone who lives along Ashley River Road, is sick of sitting in traffic every day.

Instead of just grumbling about it behind the wheel of his car, Walker decided to try to do something about it. Last week he launched www.fix61.com, a website devoted to gernerating a discussion around how to improve the mostly 2-lane highway.

"It's a place for people to submit ideas," Walker said. "As long as it's something constructive I'll post it so other people can see the idea and add to the discussion."

The site is only a week old, but Walker said he is already seeing some traffic. The first idea for improving Ashley River Road on the site is to replace some lights with traffic circles and to add a center turning lane and pedestrian walkways along the length of the road.

Walker said the idea for the site came from a discussion he had with a group of friends about the traffic problems on Ashley River Road several months ago. Everyone in the group thought that there needed to be a place where average people could collaborate on ideas to address the heavy traffic on the road, and lamented that no one had created such a place yet.

"I was sitting in traffic on 61 for 30 minutes again the other day and I decided I've just got to go ahead and do this," Walker said.

Walker doesn't see himself leading a charge for specific changes, rather he wants to facilitate a conversation and let the users and the merit of the ideas and solutions hashed out on fix61.com drive any push to implement them.

"My involvement will end with providing this forum," he said. "I hope it can bring change to benefit everyone. Sixty-one is starting to show its age."

"I think it will be good to have another forum other than a city council meeting where people can share their ideas," he added.