NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Residents of the Park Pointe neighborhood in North Myrtle Beach say traffic was terrible over the weekend.
The subdivision shares an intersection with the city’s Great Christmas Light Show event on Champions Boulevard off of Highway 90.
The city recently installed a third lane to the area for Park Pointe residents only.
Over the weekend a medical emergency caused traffic to back-up for quite some time.
“Everybody had to wait a long time. Not only the light show goers, but the Park Pointe residents. But again, emergency services had to take care of a person who had a stroke,” said North Myrtle Beach spokesperson Pat Dowling.
The light show brought in more than 3,000 cars through the area in it’s first weekend and the city is working to get Park Pointe residents home faster.
“When you come into the park you will meet up with two lanes of light show traffic and you’ll be part of that, but about a third of the way down we recently completed constructing a lane for Park Pointe only. Once they hit that, they’re free to go. Nobody else is in that lane. So you go through and you go home,” said Dowling.
Dowling says Friday and Saturday nights will be the busiest while the show is going on.
Light show goers should expect to wait up to 45 minutes in traffic and residents up to 15.
“We even added two extra ticket booths this year, which definitely cut time down quite a lot,” said Dowling.
Park Pointe residents are asked to plan around the weekend traffic.
“Come home around 5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. Don’t come home around 7 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. because that’s the peak. Or come home after the peak at 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m.,” said Dowling.