Will County will continue to issue temporary permits to overweight trucks, but county officials also are working with a new legislative committee to find more efficient ways to keep trucks moving through the county and state.
The County Board on Thursday unanimously agreed to extend the overweight permits for at least another 90 days, but at the urging of the trucking industry, may extend that deadline through the harvest season to accommodate grain shippers. That further extension could come next month, following a public hearing on the proposal.
The Illinois Commerce Commission has closed what it considers to be a dangerous rail crossing at Walter Strawn Drive and Illinois 53, effectively shutting down Walter Strawn and sending thousands of large trucks onto county roads.
In February, Will County provided the overweight permits for 90 days and then extended them for another 60 days until a solution could be worked out with the state.
The permits allow overweight trucks to use Arsenal, Baseline and Frontage roads, all of them county roads, to get to and from the CenterPoint Intermodal Centers in Joliet and Elwood. County officials hope the state will take over these roads and pay for their maintenance.
As of July 8, Bruce Gould, director of the county’s Division of Transportation, had issued 11,250 overweight permits — 7,988 of which were for containerized grain — allowing trucks to carry up to 92,000 pounds on roads that were built for less than 80,000 pounds.
In 2014, Gould granted 13,655 permits, with 10,384 for grain. Permits are sold daily for $50, weekly for $250 and monthly for $500.
“Most counties are designing roads for 100,000 pounds,” board member Don Moran, D-Romeoville, said. “We are way behind on that.”
On Wednesday, Will County Executive Larry Walsh; county board member Ragan Freitag, R-Wilmington; John Greuling, president and chief executive of the Will County Center for Economic Development; and Eric Gilbert, CenterPoint’s senior vice president for infrastructure and logistics, met with the new Illinois House Committee on Intermodal Infrastructure, chaired by Walsh’s son, state Rep. Larry Walsh Jr., D-Elwood.
Larry Walsh said they discussed how to improve safety on the highways and move trucks more efficiently in and out of the intermodal terminals.
County officials strongly urged legislators to widen Interstate 80 throughout the county, build the Houbolt Road bridge on I-80 over the Des Plaines River directly into CenterPoint property and to also widen I-55.
The intersection of I-80 and Illinois 53, which is frequently used by trucks, is another “huge safety issue” and “totally inappropriate” for that volume of traffic, Larry Walsh said.
He said it will take “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars” being spent in Will County to alleviate traffic safety issues and the gridlock from the intermodal centers.
Walsh said Randy Blankenhorn, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, also attended the hour-long committee session and is “very supportive” of these improvements.
If the state is going to have a road improvement program, “Will County should be at the top of the list,” he said.
Now that the Illiana toll road appears dead, Will County will have to step up to create safer highways, including intersection improvements and widened lanes along Wilmington-Peotone Road and Laraway Road, which are heavily used by trucks, the county executive said.
He said money for local roadwork will have to come from the county’s share of Regional Transportation Authority funds — about $23 million annually to Will County — and possibly federal grants.
Freitag urged legislators to act quickly on the Houbolt Road bridge, which could be built through a public-private partnership.
“Big trucks are wearing down our local roads at an alarming pace,” she says in a news release. “The local road infrastructure was not designed to accommodate the volume of intermodal truck traffic that we now experience.”
Freitag said there are not only many more trucks on the county roads but heavier trucks that present safety issues because they take longer to stop and are more difficult for other motorists to see around.
As Will County and its intermodal centers grow, “we have to make sure the infrastructure is there and that traffic moves safely. Businesses will leave if there is gridlock. If Will County is to be the largest inland port, we need to get everyone involved.”
