Echoes from his swearing-in had barely stopped bouncing off the boardroom walls when Mike McCoy cast his first vote as a member of the Kane County Board in 1992.
One or more bridges over the Fox River between St. Charles and South Elgin were urgently needed, McCoy and the County Board had resolved in June 1992, and the board would do whatever it could to help span-starved St. Charles ease its traffic woes.
Much has changed in the seven years since that resolution was overwhelmingly approved.
St. Charles completed construction of a $3 million, two-lane bridge, the city’s third, taking some pressure off the chronically clogged Illinois Highway 64 bridge that cuts through the heart of the city.
There are more than a dozen bridge crossings from St. Charles south to the Kendall County border, seven of them in Aurora.
But one thing remains the same. Or perhaps it has become worse. There is still no way for traffic to cross the river between Illinois 64–also known as Main Street–and South Elgin.
Since the Prairie Street bridge opened in 1994, more than 20 housing developments have been approved in central Kane, many of them in St. Charles and surrounding Campton Township.
Traffic, much of it heavy trucks, is sometimes backed up for more than a mile in either direction along Main, according to Caryl Van Overmeiren, who represents a portion of St. Charles on the Kane County Board.
And, much as they have since U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) formed a committee a decade ago to study potential major crossings, officials from St. Charles and the neighboring Village of Wayne have been at odds over a bridge at Red Gate Road at the city’s northern fringe.
St. Charles long has viewed a major connection between Red Gate and Army Trail Road that cuts through Wayne as a means of providing relief from its congestion. But Wayne officials and residents say a new bridge and the accompanying traffic would destroy the scenic road and tony village.
“If the road goes through,” Wayne Village Board member Ruth Walker said last year, “it will destroy our village.”
Instead, Wayne officials have argued, traffic will still come if the big bridge rises about 2 miles north at Stearns Road.
Now, it appears that Wayne will have its way, at least as far as the Red Gate crossing is concerned.
A recent report from the Federal Highway Administration apparently has doomed prospects for a four-lane span connecting Red Gate and Army Trail Road, delighting Wayne residents and leaving St. Charles officials feeling up the creek.
“We say there’s too much traffic; we need a four-lane bridge but we can’t build it. Now that’s talking in circles,” Van Overmeiren said. “Red Gate is very pivotal, but there are too many jurisdictional dealings.”
McCoy, elected County Board chairman in 1996, and others still believe a Red Gate bridge can be built. If it is, it would have two lanes–merely providing passage between Illinois Highways 25 and 31, which run parallel to the river–and it would be built far south of Army Trail Road.
That span would cost $10 million to $15 million and would require much less intergovernmental cooperation than a regional bridge, McCoy said. Kane County could foot at least part of the bill but would need help from other funding sources, he added.
“We’re down to limited locations where it could go, but it’s an important bridge,” McCoy said. “If we can explore some kind of joint project, that could be the first bridge you see built.”
Even though the impact on her community would be reduced, Wayne Village President Eileen Phipps continues to oppose any span in the Red Gate corridor.
“Realistically, enough is enough,” she said. “This whole process began to study regional bridges. The process was regional; it was not about finding a local bridge for St. Charles.”
Of the nine spans initially considered by Hastert’s committee, two, including Stearns Road, remain viable.
Recently, the County Board’s Transportation Committee authorized engineering studies on proposed corridors at Bolz Road in far northern Kane and at Stearns. The work is expected to cost about $10 million and use up much of Kane’s remaining allotted federal funding from a 1991 transportation bill.
During this phase, which is expected to be completed late next year, lines will be drawn designating a specific alignment for the crossings, even though it remains unclear if either or both spans would be transformed into concrete.
About 80 percent of the cost of a regional bridge–perhaps as much as $60 million–would be borne by the federal government, with the rest split between the state and county.
It doesn’t hurt, McCoy said, that House Speaker Hastert is a shepherding the project. It remains unclear whether either or both bridges will be become a reality, although officials expect to be able to secure enough funding to begin construction of at least one span in about three years.
But which one?
McCoy expects the Stearns Road corridor to receive top priority from the County Board, not because it is more urgent than a span at the county’s northern edge, but because political expediency makes it the logical selection.
“Most of the County Board members are closer to the center of the county,” McCoy said. “To me, political reality says that Stearns is more likely to get priority as a Kane County bridge.”
McCoy also said he believes a Stearns Road bridge would take at least some truck traffic out of downtown St. Charles, but, he acknowledged, it would do little to ease the city’s immediate problem of shuffling students, residents and workers across the river.
