Route 53 Editorial

NOTE: This editorial was in yesterday's Daliy Herald and I thought was quite interesting and worth repeating. When I get some more time I am going to discuss this issue in a little more depth.

Public interest in Route 53 extension will not fade A little advice for both sides in the Route 53 extension debate, which has recently resurfaced among Lake County leaders:

Proponents would do well to avoid getting excited about any possibility of this project getting done in the near future. Why? Because the odds against such a development remain overwhelming.

Skeptics and outright opponents, meanwhile, would do well to realize that unless 53 is extended northward eventually, the idea will not simply fade. Why? Because Route 53 as now configured is the very definition of an unfinished project, a glaring impediment to moving north-south traffic effectively through northwest Cook and western Lake counties.

Route 53’s extension has been stalled for decades, blocked for a variety of reasons — some more legitimate than others, none as compelling as the reasons to build it. But its relegation to a dusty “someday in the distant future” file was further assured when the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, citing a lack of consensus among Lake County leaders, left it conspicuously off of its major redevelopment plan announced in 2004.

That’s about the time that Lake County leaders, stung by the criticism of their absent leadership on transportation issues, initiated a laudable drive to prioritize manageable and realistic proposals and to stand united in completing those projects. This process, culminated by an annual transportation summit, has spurred progress on such badly needed projects as a Route 120 bypass and the widening of Route 45. No one involved in this process expected 53 to appear on the agenda. With the toll authority rejecting it and the state having no money for freeways, there was no point wasting time even discussing such a large and expensive undertaking.

But Lake County residents, who know a traffic snarling point when they see it, mentioned Route 53 during public comment periods preceding last week’s annual summit. These public comments came just as state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg began talking about selling or leasing the tollway system. That idea — half-baked though it may be — has spawned hearings, serious debate and, of course, visions of a gold mine to be devoted on a long list of state needs, from pension funding to highway building.

Reasons abound to view a sale or lease skeptically, which does not mean that an administration and legislature desperate for cash won’t implement it anyway after the fall election. Even if they do, though, competing demands will be so intense that there is no good reason to expect that any or enough revenue would be earmarked for Route 53. Hence, the advice for proponents to keep near-term expectations low, very low.

The staunchest critics of the Route 53 extension fear the mere existence of tollway lease talk will breathe new life into an idea they want to kill. But the idea will not die because the extension offers benefits far too obvious. Some opponents argue environmental concerns, which could be addressed. Some argue that an extension would crowd traffic onto arterial roads throughout Lake County, as if scattering most of that traffic throughout Lake County and moving some of it on toward Wisconsin more effectively would be more onerous than the current 53 configuration dumping all of its traffic onto such roads as Dundee, Lake Cook and Routes 12 and 83.

A more legitimate concern is raised by those who worry that injecting Route 53 into the summit process now could siphon time, energy and attention from affordable and doable improvements to arterial roads and innovations that will improve traffic flow now. That would be an unfortunate result. But there’s no serious sign of that occurring. Yes, a majority of participants in last week’s summit voiced support for extending 53, but only on the explicit conditions that it not drain money from smaller projects on the drawing board that no serious planning be done unless, somehow, sufficient money shows up.

Under those conditions, why not reaffirm long-term interest in 53?