Unless Kane County quickly develops a transportation plan to meet an ever-increasing influx of 21st-Century vehicular traffic, it can look forward to gridlock from Montgomery to Algonquin and Sugar Grove to Huntley, officials from a transportation consulting firm told the County Board’s Transportation Committee Wednesday.
“In order to grow, we have to respond with transportation improvements. But the question is, `How?’ ” Clyde Prem of Bucher, Willis & Ratliff said during a wide-ranging informational session at the Transportation Department near St. Charles.
Kane’s existing 5-year highway program calls for continued improvements to north-south thoroughfares Kirk and Randall Roads, plus a handful of other extensive projects. But those will do little to ease congestion in a county that is expected to grow to a half-million residents in the next 25 years. Currently about 350,000 people live in Kane.
According to the county’s recently-drafted 2020 Lane Resource Management Plan, much of Kane’s growth over that span will be concentrated in a corridor roughly between Randall, on the western edge of the major population centers along the Fox River, and Illinois Highway 47 that shoots northward through the county’s center.
“We don’t need to know the problems; we know the problems,” said Transportation Director Nabi Fakroddin. “We want solutions.”
The worst traffic problems should occur within the already crowded eastern third of the county, with the central third also stretched to capacity, planners said. Widening Route 47 is crucial to easing the strain on overworked Randall. So is developing some kind of north-south corridor between the two.
But the largely rural western third of Kane could escape traffic congestion if, as planned, it remains a largely agricultural region.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Fakroddin decried the slow progress toward siting and building one or more bridges across the Fox River, a process bogged down by state and federal regulations. In addition, Kane’s inability to obtain right-of-way property from private owners via quick-take condemnation contributes to delaying projects by months and sometimes years, Fakroddin said.
Highway officials also warn that a proposed $2.1 million cut in the 1996 county budget could cripple some projects for years to come.
“You can talk all you want, but you can’t build unless you have right-of-way and you have money,” Fakroddin said.
Prem told the committee it needs a campaign to sell the public on the need for major improvements.
“Everybody wants road improvements, but not (to live) near them,” Prem said.
