That Route 53 Thinga-ma-jiggy Heats Up!

I got this email about a week ago from a person who could not have summed up the frustration for roads and Route 53 in particular. I am a strong supporter of 53, but have always thought that the window closed many years ago when we as a county could not get on the same page. The emailer asked me to answer and answer I will tomorrow. His email strongly outlines the level of frustration about transportation and the lack of it in Western Lake County and in Eastern McHenry

As a resident of neighboring Volo, I enjoy regularly visiting your blog and strongly agree with many of your viewpoints, in particular the need for the proposed Advocate Hospital, as well as the Route 120 bypass. With that said, I wanted to mention a couple of recent articles I read in the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald. The articles stated that the Illinois Tollway Authority has officially authorized its staff (on Thurs,12/20/07) to prioritize its most critical proposed projects (now that 355 South Extension is complete), with the Route 53 extension specifically mentioned, along with the Prarie Parkway and Illiana Expressway. Here are the links: to the article in the Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune.

Now, while I'm well aware of how long this project has been on the table, this seems like a great opportunity for local elected officials in Lake County who support the extension to get together with one uniform voice to finally push this forward. It seems that overwhelmingly the residents and villages of Lake County support the extension and this seems like as good as an opportunity as ever to attempt to move forward and become the next top priority project for the Illinois Tollway. In particular, when I reviewed the other projects on the table listed in the articles, the Route 53 extension actually seems like the most sensible/needed, with the strongest case for, with the longest standing proposal, and ironically, the one with the most support for it. Additionally, with the significant residential growth in Northern/Western Lake County over the past several years and a large percentage of those residents needing to commute south and/or east for work, it seems that a significant effort now has the potential to create quite a public buzz in favor of the extension. Further, doesn't the state already own virtually all/a good portion of the land needed to complete the extension (as marked by the FAP 342 signs)?

I'm also aware that there are one or two key villages (representing a very small percentage of the surrounding population) who have always strongly opposed the extension, but in reality, any project will always have some percentage of resistors to change, no matter how important it is to the overall surrounding communities affected. I believe the same was the case for the 355 south extension for some time. Additionally, I have seen a wide variety of elected officials (both Democrat and Republican) whose jurisdiction's are directly affected, as well as personally spoken to residents I work with who live in the immediate vicinity of the one or two key villages opposing, who strongly support the extension.

At your earliest convenience, if you could let me know your thoughts on these recent articles and any possibilities that you think may exist now that haven't over the past several years, that would be great. As you've probably noticed, I'm very passionate, yet frustrated about the decades of delays for this extension. It's one of the most overwhelmingly obvious proposed extension projects needing completion that I'm aware of and would like to see it fianlly happen. Lastly, I realize funding has been brought up as a big issue (understandably), however, where did the $700-$800 million come from to enable the I-355 extension to be constructed (within a few years time no less)?