Chicago Tribune
December 10, 2004
By William Presecky
Tribune staff reporter
Three years after unveiling a controversial plan to protect a highway corridor through Kendall and southern Kane
Counties from suburban sprawl, state planners say they are not committed to the Prairie Parkway and remain flexible
on transit options for the booming area.
Although U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and state Transportation Secretary Tim Martin have shown a
preference for the parkway plan, an Ottawa-based project engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation
isn't so sure.
"At this point we are neutral on what works and what doesn't work," Rick Powell said during public meetings
this week. "We're still open to suggestions" on plans for the area's current and future transportation
needs, he said.
IDOT's quest to identify "a single alternative [solution] or a very small number of alternatives" is
based on a needs analysis completed in April that shows the daily traffic volume in the area is projected to increase
from 30 percent to 230 percent on various roads by 2030.
Despite moving to protect a 36-mile long, 400-foot wide highway corridor, IDOT is not bound to the concept, Powell
said.
"The protected corridor [between Interstate Highways 88 and 80] is a land reserved for one possible solution,"
he told a group of about 60 residents Wednesday at a Prairie Parkway Study meetingin Sugar Grove. A second session
was set for Thursday in Morris.
IDOT organized a series of workshops and private meetings over the summer that were designed to more directly involve
the general public and local officials in the planning process. The agency gleaned more than 150 transportation
improvement concepts that have been grouped into general corridors. They will be evaluated over the next year.
A complete project update is available at www.prairie-parkway.com.
"We have the flexibility ... the freedom ... to change or remove the corridor," said Powell, in response
to a question he and IDOT's consultants have been asked repeatedly since December 2002. That's when the state announced
plans for a five-year, $18 million study of the area's transportation needs.
The study area encompasses nearly 1,600 square miles and includes all of Kendall County and parts of six adjacent
counties.
Though commending the agency's effort, a spokesman for Citizens Against the Sprawlway, a grass-roots group opposed
to the Prairie Parkway, acknowledged there continues to be "a healthy skepticism ... that IDOT and certainly
Rep. Hastert are committed and focused on the Prairie Parkway as a single solution to transportation problems."
Still, group spokesman Jan Strasma credits IDOT planners "with a major effort to involve the public, to talk
to the public and perhaps listen to the public."
Martin has identified the Prairie Parkway as a priority transportation project for the state.
Hastert has long been a proponent for construction of a north-south expressway linking I-88 and I-80 through his
district.