The Homewood Village Board voted down a previously-approved plan to reduce the number of lanes of 183rd Street over the objections of residents Tuesday.
The “road diet” plan, previously approved pending funding in 2022, would reduce the road to one lane of traffic in either direction, with a dedicated center turn lane and buffer zones separating the road from the sidewalk on either side. Of the community members who spoke on the issue at the meeting, 10 spoke in favor of the road diet, while one spoke against.
Instead, officials voted to pursue alternative measures to slow dangerously fast driving, including heavy policing of the corridor and installing new signs and signals.
Many of those in favor of the road diet are residents along 183rd Street. Caroline Kjos and her husband, Ashley Kjos, moved to a house on 183rd Street in April of last year. When they were viewing the house, the road was their main concern.
“It was pretty fast, pretty hectic. It was four lanes, two in each direction, which just seemed a little out of joint with how many homes had driveways directly into it,” Ashley Kjos said.
When they expressed their concern, their real estate agents told them about the proposed road diet plan, which had been approved by the board of trustees two years before. They were relieved.
“‘Oh, they’re already aware that this street is a busy, problematic, unsafe street,'” Caroline Kjos said, recalling her thoughts. “We were excited that they’d already been looking into it and hopefully addressing it.”
The problem of how to fix 183rd Street has been a multi-year issue in Homewood. The span between Halsted Street and Kedzie Avenue, which includes the intersection with Dixie Highway, was expanded from two to four lanes in 1987.
“Many of the residents who were around at that time, this was like the mid-1980s, said that all of the fears of the residents came to fruition,” said Jon Labok, who has lived on 183rd Street since 2013. “Traffic sped up drastically, the amount of accidents increased, and for what? A racetrack through the center of this little town?”
Labok and other residents said one of the main issues with the road is that it primarily functions as a fast way through, in and out of Homewood, despite being a residential street. One resident at Tuesday’s meeting suggested it should be renamed “Homewood Highway.”
Following a fatal crash in 2021, the village hired engineering firm Burns & McDonnell to undertake a study of 183rd Street traffic issues and how the thoroughfare might be improved.
The study documented a high number of rear-end crashes, and noted the high number of smaller roads and private driveways that exit onto 183rd Street and a lack of dedicated left turn lanes as likely causes.
In other words, people drive at very high speeds down the same road where people have to come to a stop in an active lane to wait to turn, and where people are frequently backing in and out of their driveways.
“The traffic is not that bad in the first place, and because of that, people are free to exceed the speed limit, and so, two lanes in either direction, it ends up being like a drag race every time the light turns green,” Labok said.
Labok lives near the intersection of 183rd Street and Dixie Highway, a particularly hazardous span.
“In the time that I’ve lived here, there have been two people who’ve died within the same, really less than a mile stretch,” Labok said. “One of them was directly in front of my house, at that intersection that I live on. And there have been numerous accidents where I caught them on my doorbell camera. I had to respond to the accident right in front of my house.”
Even more than for drivers, neighbors say the road isn’t safe for pedestrians or bikers. There is little separation between the narrow sidewalk and the fast-moving traffic. Multiple people talked about being afraid to walk their dogs down the sidewalk.
“It’s a very family-friendly community, but 183rd Street is not. I think it would be nice if kids could play in their front yards, or people spend more time on their porches,” said Caroline Kjos. “You don’t have trick-or-treaters or anything like that, because people don’t want to be out there.”
Following the traffic study and a series of open house discussions with the community, the primary potential solution that emerged was the road diet. After a two-week pilot program conducted by blocking off lanes, the board voted to approve the plan in late 2022, subject to funding availability.
That funding availability has turned out to be a stumbling block.
In April 2023, Homewood was awarded $232,875 in funding from the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program (ITEP), a project of the Illinois Department of Transportation.
However, use of that grant would require the village to conduct a full Phase 1 engineering study, as well as additional requirements from IDOT in the future.
The village’s request to be exempted on the basis that the plan would only require repainting the lanes rather than a full construction project was denied by IDOT, and progress on the project subsequently stalled.
The slow movement on the issue has been frustrating to 183rd Street residents, since the urgent safety issue remains.
“It was pretty much put on the backburner,” Labok said. “And in the time that this happened, another person was hit and killed by a car.”
Regardless of whether the village accepted the grant and associated IDOT costs and requirements or if it attempted to fund the full project on its own, a funding gap would remain. According to projections by village staff, a plan that used the ITEP funding would leave the village with at least $101,800 to cover for the first phase, while a plan that did not use the ITEP funding would cost the village more than $288,100 for the first phase.
The ITEP grant will also expire if not used by April 2027.
Besides the question of funding, the main concern raised about the road diet plan was the possibility that reducing lanes could congest traffic. Other worries included the possibility that drivers would illegally use the center lane as a passing lane, and that the movement of emergency vehicles like fire trucks might be impeded.
Village Manager Napoleon Haney, while presenting the current situation at the board meeting, said the study that originally recommended the road diet was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning it might reflect abnormally low traffic patterns.
“I personally do not believe that cutting down four to three is a wise idea,” community member Stephen McDowell said at the meeting. “We’re going to see a large amount of traffic getting blocked up and pushed all the way out.”
Only one trustee, Jay Heiferman, voted against the plan to set the road diet proposal aside and rely instead on alternative traffic calming measures. He said while he also supported measures like added signs and increased police enforcement, he still felt the road diet was the solution. Another trustee, Lauren Roman, voted for the alternative measures but said she still wanted to maintain the road diet as an option.
Afterwards, 183rd Street residents were angry. During the meeting, resident Angela Thomas had shared a time her six-year-old daughter was nearly struck by a speeding car while crossing 183rd Street.
“They want to pretend that we don’t live there,” Thomas said after the meeting.
elewis@chicagotribune.com
