COASTAL OBSERVER

Golf carts are no longer permitted on the multi-use path that runs alongside Willbrook Boulevard. It was the only portion of the Bike the Neck route along Waccamaw Neck where the vehicles were allowed.

“It kind of caught us by surprise,” said Dave Phillips, president of the Willbrook Plantation Road Maintenance District. “We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when.”

The ban follows a suit filed in 2021 by a Pawleys Island area woman who was hit by a golf cart while riding her bike on the Willbrook path. The suit claimed Georgetown County was negligent in allowing golf carts to use that portion of the path when the vehicles were banned everywhere else. The road district and the driver were also named.

The suit was settled last October.

Beth Goodale, the county Parks and Recreation director, put the signs up herself last week. She ordered signs that she thought would be less institutional than those along other portions of the Bike the Neck route and attached them to the back of existing signs. 

“Those were supposed to be the permanent signs,” she said.

Four of the plastic signs are now missing.

“I have no explanation about why they’re disappearing,” Phillips said, who was out of town when the signs went up.

Some area residents were confused by the signs, in part because they didn’t think they looked official.

The path was built by the Litchfield Co. when it developed Willbrook in the 1990s. In 2005, it was deeded to the county, but golf carts were allowed to use the path because residents in the development have access to the beach at Litchfield by the Sea.

In the lawsuit, the county claimed that its arrangement meant the ordinance banning golf carts from the Bike the Neck path didn’t have to be enforced on the Willbrook route. 

But a judge ruled that the easement held by the road district didn’t relieve the county of its duty to maintain the bike path or enforce its ordinance.

The settlement was reached before the suit went to trial. The county and the road district each paid $50,000 and the driver paid $100,000, according to Phillips.

Signs that had stated golf carts were allowed, and that included rules of the road, were removed last fall.

“It was determined once and for all that the county owns and operates that bike path,” Phillips said.

The speed limit on Willbrook Boulevard is 35 mph, which means golf carts are allowed to use the road. Phillips pointed out that the carts already use the road to cross Highway 17 to reach Litchfield by the Sea because the bike and pedestrian crossing doesn’t accommodate the vehicles.

Goodale said she thought that the word went out to the homeowners associations after the lawsuit was settled last year. She said the signs she put up weren’t part of the settlement.

The prohibition on motor vehicles will be enforced by the sheriff’s office, she said, but it depends on a deputy actually seeing a violation.

“I see them all the time,” Goodale said. “I see them all over.”