Orland Park’s reputation as a shopping mecca for the southwest suburbs has created a perception that the village is a center for traffic gridlock and that traveling on its main roads can be a long haul.
Not so fast, says Orland Park Village Manager Rick Boehm. Travel times are quicker than expected. In 1998, a state study found that an average of 47,000 vehicles a day used La Grange Road between 143rd and 151st Streets, passing through the heart of Orland’s retail district.
A few years ago, at Mayor Daniel McLaughlin’s request, Orland Park employees timed vehicles passing through the village, between 135th and 167th Streets, during the Christmas season.
“We consistently found that during the rush hour, it took 16 to 18 minutes,” Boehm said, adding that travel times during other parts of the year will be measured. “The mayor has committed to looking at that [study]. He wants to address what he believes to be a severe perception problem that it takes a lot longer to get through Orland Park than it actually does. That time is a pretty good time, given the amount of traffic that goes through Orland Park during the Christmas season.”
La Grange Road work planned
Orland Park has commissioned the first phase of engineering for the expansion of La Grange Road, the major north-south route in the village, from four to six lanes between 135th and 179th Streets. That engineering, which involves an environmental study and preliminary design work, will start this summer and should be completed by late this year or early 2002, Boehm said.
When that is done, Orland Park will ask state officials to include money for Phase Two engineering in the Illinois Department of Transportation’s five-year funding plan for road projects, he said. Until the project is included in the funding plan, village officials can only hope that the expansion will start within a few years.
Village covers engineering costs
To keep the project moving, Orland Park officials decided to pay for Phase One engineering, estimated at $1 million, Boehm said.
“That will move that project up on the state’s priority list,” he said. “There is no money allocated for it, but we have a commitment that up to 90 percent of the Phase One engineering cost will be reimbursed.”
Along La Grange Road, IDOT will add turn lanes at the intersections of 151st and 153rd Streets and improve the signals at those locations, Boehm said. The village is also pursuing projects on its southern end of La Grange Road, he said.
A developer who is building a health club at 163rd Street will help pay for the installation of a road between La Grange Road and 94th Avenue. Orland Park and Tinley Park officials have asked the state to expand La Grange between 179th Street and Interstate Highway 80, for $22.4 million. The project will widen the road to six from four lanes, improve the intersection of La Grange and 179th Street and rebuild the interchange, said IDOT spokesman Steve Kulm. Preliminary construction is to start in the fall with the moving of utility lines, he said. Construction will resume in the spring of 2002 and is expected to last the rest of the year, Kulm said.
Improvements are on tap this summer for other roads in Orland Park, Boehm said. On Wolf Road, IDOT will install stoplights at the intersections of 151st and 153rd Streets and add a turn lane between 139th and 143rd Streets.
In Tinley Park, 183rd Street will be expanded this summer from two to four lanes between Sayre Avenue and 76th Avenue, said Village Trustee Dave Seaman, and planning continues for the roadway west of 76th Avenue. A key element is extending the road between the 8200 and 8400 blocks. A stumbling block in that project is Metra’s Rock Island line, which would intersect the proposed road in the 8300 block. Because of cost, Tinley Park officials favor building a grade crossing at the location, Seaman said, but Metra opposes installing grade crossings for safety reasons.
“We will try to see if this can’t be an exemption,” Seaman said.
Metra expansion in works
Metra is still working on plans to expand its service to Orland Park, which is on the Southwest Service Line between Union Station in Chicago and 179th Street. The agency plans to add a second track to the line between Orland Park and Palos Park to alleviate service interruptions caused by freight trains, said Metra spokesman Frank Malone.
As part of the project, Metra plans to extend the line 11 miles to Manhattan. Plans for the entire project are subject to Metra completing a funding agreement with a federal transportation agency in June, Malone said.
That agreement spells out how the $218.7 million project will be funded, with local governments–from the state to Metra to local communities–contributing 41 percent of the money for the project, he said. Though there is no timetable for the project, construction could begin in 2005, Malone said.
Pace adding routes
Pace amended routes this spring that run through Orland Park and Tinley Park. The changes, which took effect in March, were made to Route 354, which serves both towns, and Route 364, which serves Tinley Park.
On Route 364, Pace added direct service from Orland Square to the River Oaks shopping center in Calumet City and began running the buses every half hour instead of every hour, Pace spokesman Blaine Krage said. The agency will also add buses on the route to match shopping center hours, he said.
On Route 354, the agency added rush-hour service to the Tinley Crossings Business Park, where the DeVry Institute of Technology opened a campus last year, Krage said. Route 354 operates from Monday through Saturday while buses on Route 364 will continue to run every day, he said. Pace made the changes after conducting a major study of ridership trends on the routes. Route 364 has operated since 1975 and Route 354 was added in 1986, Krage said.
“We wanted to take a fresh look at these routes,” he said. “This is the first time that we have really thoroughly analyzed a corridor of service and made major changes.”
