120 Coverage in the Chicago Tribune

Got some coverage in Today's Chicago Tribune on the 120 bypass issue. Front page of the Metro section.

Illinois 120 bypass plan could be a team effort Traffic woes prompt countywide summit

By Robert Channick, Special to the Tribune
Published September 13, 2005

A decades-old plan to alleviate east-west traffic may soon hit the fast lane if the efforts of some Lake County officials are successful.

Grayslake and Round Lake simultaneously approved resolutions last week supporting construction of a new four-lane road, joining the County Board and other municipalities along the bottlenecked corridor that back the project. Officials hope to use a countywide transportation summit Thursday to build momentum for an Illinois Highway 120 bypass from Waukegan to Volo.

"There's no transportation east and west in this county that isn't a two-lane road," said Round Lake Mayor Bill Gentes. "Traffic is choked up here. We're all getting to this point where enough is enough, we have to do something, and the 120 bypass is clearly the thing we need to do."

Narrowing to two lanes just west of the Tri-State Tollway, Illinois 120 traffic often grinds to a halt for miles in both directions during rush hour, due in part to booming residential development along the once-bucolic central Lake County route, according to Gentes.

Gentes and Grayslake Mayor Tim Perry say they expect to have 60 letters of support in hand before the summit, scheduled from 8 a.m. to noon at the College of Lake County in Grayslake.

More than 3,000 business and government leaders have been invited to the event, which is designed to prioritize county road projects to accelerate funding and construction.

Representatives of the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority are also scheduled to participate, and local officials hope they will respond to a unified message.

"One of the problems we were hearing from the funding sources at the state level, the tollway and the federal level was that we never presented them with projects that had the backing of the community and the region," said state Rep. Kathy Ryg (D-Vernon Hills). "We really were missing out on the funding for our roadway improvements because of our lack of consensus."

Born in the wake of the county's failed April sales-tax increase for a laundry list of road improvements, the summit has a goal of voting on three or four targeted projects annually, according to organizers.

"In order to get projects of regional significance, you've really got to form a consensus," said David Young, president of Lake County Partners, the not-for-profit economic development corporation that planned the summit. "The Highway 120 bypass appears to be emerging as the next big regional project."

An offshoot of the proposed Illinois Highway 53 extension, which stalled several years ago over the objections of several communities along the north-south route, the bypass would likely jut south near Wildwood and reconnect with Illinois 120 on the western end of the county. Support has been widespread, according to officials.

"It is nice to see communities that may not look like they're immediately impacted by a road project come on board with it," Perry said. "I think that speaks volumes about how everybody understands the nightmare that is traffic congestion in Lake County."

Expected to cost more than $100 million, the project should not require additional tax dollars, backers say.

"We anticipate this being paid for out of existing tax dollars," Perry said. "We get back pennies on the dollar for what we already pay in, with a disproportionate amount being spent Downstate. It would be nice to see a few more dollars flow back to the area."

While the bypass is expected to accommodate traffic demands for the year 2030, proponents hope to have it running a couple of decades sooner. Importantly, much of the right of way for the new road has been obtained, according to officials.

"In Grayslake and Round Lake, we have developments that have been around for years that have this giant 300-foot strip right through the middle of them, where the 120 bypass is coming," Gentes said.

South of the Grayslake Metra station, the upscale Village Station Townhomes feature a long row of back porches that look out over the open fields from which they sprouted. On village planning maps, however, the bean crop would eventually yield to the designated bypass at the center of a 900-acre mixed-use development.

"People who think they have an enormous back yard now, in the future may not," Gentes said.