The Illinois Department of Transportation will hold public hearings
this week focusing on several proposed road closings and dozens of
revisions to a protected corridor originally set aside for the proposed
far western Prairie Parkway, which would link Interstate Highways 88
and 80.
Results of the open-house-style hearings will be included as part of
the final environmental impact statement that IDOT will submit in an
effort to get the federal authorization needed to proceed with the
estimated $1 billion 37-mile expressway.
The hearings are scheduled to run from 5:30 to 8
p.m. Wednesday in Yorkville High School, 797 Game Farm Rd., Yorkville,
and from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday in Kaneland John Shields Elementary
School, 85 S. Main St., Sugar Grove.
A coalition of environmental and public interest groups opposed to the
Prairie Parkway is challenging the 13 road connections that would be
severed by the highway.
"It simply makes no sense to bottleneck
the region's transportation network by closing 13 roads to build an
ineffective highway," said Stacy Meyers-Glen of Openlands, one of the
coalition members.
"Improving a network of roads -- with
Illinois [Highway] 47 as the centerpiece -- would better serve
motorists now while avoiding the severe impacts of the proposed
freeway," said Jan Strasma, a representative for Citizens Against the
Sprawlway, an opposition group that organized more than five years ago
to fight the proposal after IDOT's decision in 2001 to protect a
potential highway corridor from development.
About 60 percent
of the corridor that was originally protected lies outside the
preferred routing alignment. About 130 new properties will have to be
added to the corridor, and more than 90 properties that no longer need
to be protected under the preferred alignment will be deleted, said
IDOT project manager Rick Powell.
Among the corridor properties
that have been protected since 2002, and which will continue to be
protected, is an 80-acre swath of land that cuts through a proposed
landfill in far southern Kendall County, Powell said. IDOT has declined
for now to adjust its routing to accommodate the yet-to-be-approved
Willow Run Landfill, he said.
"We think the landfill has a long
way to go in their process. We didn't want to go through a lot of work
for nothing," said Powell, in explaining the agency's rationale for
declining to alter the preferred Prairie Parkway routing alignment in
deference to the Willow Run Landfill.
IDOT is gearing up to
start construction within two years on the so-called B5 transportation
alternative, which includes an expressway that meanders from Kaneville
to Minooka and the widening to four lanes of a 12-mile stretch of
Illinois 47 from Caton Farm Road to I-80 near Morris.
Less than a third of the federal and state funds required to complete the project is currently available.