CMAQ Grant and the Long Lake Station

Yesterday's passage of the large federal transportation bill should be bringing a few million dollars to the Village of Round Lake. We applied for a CMAQ grant (the Congestion mitigation Air Quality grant) two years ago in a partnership with Lake County, Grant Township and Metra. Unfortunately the first go round of the request for funding Metra decided at the last minute not to include this project in the funding (conveniently forgetting to tell myself and Lake County Board Member Bonnie Thompson Carter until after the submittal date infuriating the two of us!). The second go round was much more successful after Bonnie and I "encouraged" Metra to prioritize the project.

The thinking and basic facts behind the application for the grant was as follows:

1. The Long Lake Metra Station (number 2 on the map above) has roughly 40 parking spots, and residents were complaining about cars being parked on the grass(number 3 on the map above) and illegally along Long Lake Drive.
2. The intersection of Long Lake Drive and 134 (number 4 on the map above) is very dangerous, in fact a few years ago thier was a fatality there.
3. Valley Lakes Neighborhood 13 was located across the street (number 1 on the map above). This was a single family neighborhood platted for 28 homes in the Valley Lakes PUD.

The concept we came up with was for Metra to purchase neighborhood 13 from Pritzer (Valley Lakes Development company owners) and create a parking lot for the station across the street from the station, replacing the 28 homes scheduled to be built at some point on the site. In addtioin the station would be remodeled and improved on. There would be a spot where we could have some small retail for the station as well. In attain the intersection would also get a traffic signal to facilitate people crossing the street from the parking lot safely.

From the village's perspective this is a nice concept which provides us with some positives.

• A reduction of 28 houses.
• Increased parking for Metra inside the village limits, and the revenue for that parking.
• A path from Valley Lakes to the station for any residents who commute via Metra.
• A traffic signal improving traffic flow all along the 134 corridor from Wilson into our downtown.
• Added retail for the area and our bottomline.

Over the next few days we will get a better handle on the status of the funding and the possibility of making the project a reality. Numerous things hinge on the varibles out of our control, these varibles were made increasingly diffucult by missing the first go round of CMAQ funding last year.