A few years ago I was driving home from Christmas with the in-laws in Pennsylvania, when a monstrous slowdown on I-95 in South Carolina sent me on a multi-hour detour along parallel roads. Passing through the historic downtown of Bamberg, I slammed on the brakes to gawk in disbelief at what I was seeing.

It was several blocks of almost picture-perfect, classic Southern American urbanism. Gorgeous old brick buildings made only more appealing by the patina of age; a delightfully granular mix of narrow storefronts lining the sidewalk creating visually enticing edges to stroll; festive Christmas wreaths on the lamp posts just as in the Google Street View image here.

The catch: nearly every single storefront was vacant. It was like being in a ghost town, only Bamberg is still very much inhabited.

I mostly forgot about the place until a photo of the exact same town popped up on Twitter, and I just had to comment. You see, there’s one very obvious clue to what went wrong in Bamberg, South Carolina. It’s plainly visible when you drive through, and it’s the other reason I gawked (besides the historic beauty).

Bamberg, at some point, seems to have decided its Main Street should be a limited-access highway. In order to speed up the flow of cars on US-301, they’ve not only streamlined and widened the road; they’ve also cordoned off the narrow sidewalks behind wrought-iron railings, ensuring that nobody will cross the street on foot and slow down drivers.