Paul Jensen walked to the microphone in the center of the auditorium, glancing at a handful of index cards. The man who refers to himself as the
”one-man O`Hare-Elgin Committee” of the Trails Homeowners Association had a message to deliver about the proposed Elgin-O`Hare Expressway.
The roadway, Jensen told a hearing on the road convened last week by the Illinois Department of Transportation, would generate too much noise in the Roselle neighborhood where he lives; it would cause the degeneration of his community; and it wasn`t very well planned. Where, he wanted to know, would all the necessary funds come from?
Jensen`s words were greeted by a conspicuous silence.
To Jensen`s puzzlement, there were no shouts of support, no applause. In fact, only a dozen of the 200 people who had gathered at the Itasca Holiday Inn chose to comment publicly on the proposed highway. Many of the speakers praised it.
Some transportation officials and analysts believe that the Du Page County residents who are willing–in some cases, eager–to see the expressway constructed are representative of a growing number of people nationwide who have eased their protests against major highway projects, at one time the focus of environmental and citizens` groups.
”We`re coming into a new era–highway construction is once again respectable,” said Kenneth Orski, president of Urban Mobility Corporation, a Washington, D.C., management consulting firm specializing in transportation.
”Throughout the `60s and `70s, there was a tremendous revulsion against building highways, especially in urban areas. But that revulsion seems to have been overcome now by the concerns over the rapidly rising level of traffic congestion.”
In some urban areas, Orski said, highway projects that might once have drawn stern opposition are now coming to fruition. In Fairfax County, Va., for example, there has been little or no opposition to the construction of the Springfield Bypass, a cross-county thoroughfare, Orski said. In addition, a county-wide referendum has freed funds for the construction of other new roadways.
”Ten years ago, such a referendum would have failed miserably,” Orski said.
”We`re seeing a turnaround,” said Kevin Heanue, director of planning at the Federal Highway Administration. ”Newspapers and magazines are talking about the need for highway investment rather than the problems of building them.”
In the Denver area, Heanue said, a segment of interstate highway would be constructed with private funds; 10 years ago, environmentalists effectively halted the same project.
Partial funding for the Elgin-O`Hare road has come from the now abandoned Crosstown Expressway project in Chicago, which was killed by community and environmentalist opposition in the late `70s. And both the proposed Elgin-O`Hare freeway and the Du Page Tollway, now under construction, had been under discussion for 20 years and were stalled until recently by lack of funding and community opposition.
In the Chicago area, Orski said, the seeming lack of opposition to the Elgin-O`Hare road can be attributed to two factors.
”The right of way goes through a relatively sparsely populated area,”
Orski explained. ”And it may also reflect the general frustration that residents in the Chicago metropolitan area have experienced with traffic congestion. Building new highways is a better alternative than suffering through growing levels of traffic congestion.”
”A lot of suburban residents are at wit`s end as far as traffic congestion,” said Robert Cervero, an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning of the University of California and author of
”Suburban Gridlock.”
”They realize that the nature of suburbs has been totally transformed. Traffic is here to stay, and perhaps more and more citizens are willing to give in.”
But Cervero cautioned that the seemingly fewer, less intense confrontations between highway planners and citizens` groups also results from the fact that relatively few highway projects are underway. Emotions flare as actual construction approaches, he pointed out.
”A lot of times, a lot of citizens don`t get concerned until they see the bulldozers coming down the road,” Cervero said. ”A lot of times, it`s too late then. Everything has been rubber-stamped and approved.”
On the other hand, highway officials say, the process of informing the public about potential threats to the environment in the required
environmental-impact statements have defused some public outcries.
”We have gone through the meeting process,” said Ken Macander, project and environmental studies section chief for the transportation department.
”We have heard what the people have been saying over the last two years.”
”Where the highway is going you don`t have the homes, the shopping centers, the schools. If you did, I think you`d have people out there screaming and shouting. The actual number of displaced people is very minimal considering the magnitude of the project.”
About 50 homes and businesses have been marked for acquisition by the department.
The proposed highway is a 21-mile corridor linking the airport with the western suburbs. The department has $87 million to begin engineering and construction work on the roadway, and the recent series of public hearings was one of the last steps before final approval for the project is sought by the department.
Jensen is not leading a one-man crusade against Elgin-O`Hare. His concerns–about noise, declining property values, the environment–are widely shared by residents who live along the proposed highway alignment. But his sense of outrage is echoed mostly by groups who object to specific design or alignment elements, such as the Bensenville residents who protested the southern alignment of the roadway under consideration, but not the road itself.
”People have sat waiting in traffic at the railroad and Irving Park Road so many times,” said Bensenville Village Manager Mike Allison, ”that most people feel the road is necessary.”
At the department hearing, a series of large aerial photos lined the auditorium depicting the route and alignment that the highway would follow. Residents lined up, sometimes two or three deep, in front of the photos to locate their homes near, or in some cases directly in the path of, the proposed roadway.
”As long as they pay a fair price for my house, they can take it,” said Ray Forstberg Jr., whose home in unincorporated Cook County will be acquired if the freeway is built.
Even Jensen, who hopes funding for the entire roadway will not materialize, said he could coexist with the highway if the proper noise abatement measures were instituted.
”In other states where I`ve lived, in Iowa and Minneapolis,” Jensen said, ”people get up and say, `You`re not going to do this.` On the other side of the Mississippi people have a different ethic.
