Lizbeth Eudave said she did not let her young daughter go outside without her supervision in the four years she lived about 55 feet from Ridgeland Avenue between 183rd Street and 175th Street in Tinley Park.
She said the speeding cars on the county road along with the lack of sidewalks and street lighting felt unsafe, even when getting her mail or taking out her trash. She and neighbors Maureen Rodak and Tara Nagy said they hear prolonged loud engine noise at night that appears to be cars street racing.
Eudave moved in February due to increased housing costs, but she said neighbors know the road as a hazard, so much so that it has become a place where parents don’t let children trick or treat.
Several of those neighbors took their concerns to Tinley Park officials and Cook County government, which maintains the road. The county proposed lowering the speed limit by 5 mph, to 35 mph, and is set to approve the change on June 11, if it passes through a May 14 county committee.
Neighbors argue the speed change is not enough and should be lowered more or paired with traffic calming measures. The county argues the road is a major collector roadway.
A major collector means the road carries more traffic than a local street and is intended to funnel traffic from multiple streets to higher capacity roads such as state highways, according to Meaghan Johnson, Cook County public relations specialist.
Eudave’s neighbor, Howard Biela, urged Tinley Park in late April to ask the county to lower the speed limit.
“I fear for my life walking down that street, just looking over my shoulder,” he said. “It needs to be lower than 35 … we’ve cracked the door open. I’d like to kick it open.”
Tinley Park Mayor Michael Glotz said he agreed “wholeheartedly” with Biela, but said the village has a hard time convincing the county to lower speed limits. He said he was surprised they proposed lowering the limit at all.
The Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways proposed the speed change after receiving a speed limit modification request from Tinley Park officials, Johnson said.
Kyle Vester, Tinley Park engineer, said he requested the speed limit be lowered to 20 mph, as that is the village’s standard for residential streets.
Johnson said the county conducted a speed study, which she said involves collecting existing speed data and crash history, as well as the roadway’s characteristics and surrounding land use. Data such as curves, hills, number of lanes present as well as the number of driveways and bicycle and sidewalk facilities are taken into consideration, she said.
Johnson said the study data, along with Ridgeland Avenue’s classification as a major collector roadway, determined 35 mph is an appropriate speed limit.
She said the county follows guidance issued by the Illinois Department of Transportation when performing speed studies and setting speed limits on roadways, and also conducts its own safety studies on corridors and intersections, in addition to countywide safety evaluations.
A few Ridgeland Avenue residents said they worried about their safety as they walked the road Wednesday.
Nagy, a resident who walked from the Tinley Park train station after work, said she does not wear headphones on Ridgeland Avenue so she can be aware of speeding cars.
She also said her dog, who she said is usually not afraid of cars, is often spooked by the fast moving vehicles. She said the noise only worsens at night.
She said she is surprised by the speed limit with the nearby high school and elementary schools.
“We don’t have a fence, so keeping track of our dog, making sure she doesn’t run into the street or, like when we have kids someday, walking a baby with a stroller down this street, makes me nervous, or having a toddler being this close to the street without a sidewalk and it being so fast,” Nagy said.
Grace Bodencak and Skylar Cinnot, freshmen at Tinley Park High School, walked on Ridgeland Avenue after school Wednesday, although Bodencak’s mother Laura McGrath said she does not often let her daughter walk on the road.
Bodencak and Cinnot said they tried to walk in the grass instead, but the ditches and construction made it hard to avoid the road.
Rodak, another Ridgeland Avenue resident, said she likes to jog and bike but does not like spending long on the road and wears a reflector vest. She said it’s also hard to get out of her driveway in the morning and that she placed reflectors at the end of her driveway due to speeding and lack of lighting at night.
Rodak said she has seen a lot of construction on the road and hopes every time that they are installing a sidewalk or street lights.
Tinley Park has led several improvement projects on the road that included adding turn lanes as part of larger improvements to 175th Street, according to the village website.
awright@chicagotribune.com
