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The Cook County Commission late last year approved funding for transportation improvements in municipalities including Franklin Park and River Forest, officials announced in a news release.
According to the release, these transportation-related projects will foster economic development, build regional transportation, and improve quality of life throughout the county.
“This will be done through Invest in Cook,” Franklin Park Village Engineer Tom McCabe told the Pioneer Press.
The Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways’ 2023 Investment in Cook Grant Program lists $125,000 for preliminary engineering for the West O’Hare Industrial Arterial Access Project in Franklin Park.
McCabe said the $125,000 the county awarded to the Village of Franklin Park will cover 50 percent of the preliminary engineering study for the Wolf Road and Addison Avenue intersection, and the remaining 50 percent of the $250,000 project He said the village would pay from the general fund. .
“That intersection is currently congested with trucks mixing in with the cars passing through it. So the goal here is to make it easier to navigate the turning movements of trucks. ” he said.
McCabe explained that the truck uses Frontage Road, which runs parallel to Wolfe Road, and has to make a 180-degree turn using the entire Wolfe and Addison intersection, creating a traffic bottleneck.
“No one is going anywhere until these trucks start moving,” he said, noting that truck traffic has more than quadrupled in the past five years as industrial zones have gone from being all manufacturing facilities to now being all distribution warehouses. It added that the number had increased.
McCabe said the first phase of the West O’Hare Industrial Corridor Access Project will determine whether dedicated turn lanes, traffic lights, larger intersections and other solutions can ease truck congestion.
“Having trucks coming in and out of this area is a big boon for both the county and the village. Usually if (a project) creates jobs or creates more business or commerce, they all get behind it. There are,” he said.
McCabe expected Franklin Park to submit its certification application this month, with preliminary design work likely to begin in April.
“Phase I will include topographical surveys, environmental factor surveys, and traffic surveys. These things do not require road closures,” he said.
McCabe estimates that the first of the three-phase West O’Hare Industrial Arterial Access project could be completed by the end of 2024.
“Phase II is the final engineering, and then we’ll probably look for public funding for that, grants to do that work, and then after that,” he said.
The second phase of the project could begin in April 2025 and be completed by the end of the year, McCabe said.
“Construction will be several years away,” McCabe said of the intersection safety and mobility improvements that will be made in Phase III.
He said the Invest in Cook grant program is also one of several partners in the $30 million project to widen Franklin Avenue from two to five lanes starting in 2022.
“They just closed down for the winter. They’re done on one side. The north side is done and construction is expected to start on the south side next spring,” McCabe said of Franklin, which is scheduled to be completed in 2024. He talked about the Avenue Project.
The $100,000 awarded to nearby River Forest will go toward construction of sidewalk improvements to rebuild sidewalk ramps throughout the village, according to a release from the Cook County Commission. This project is part of the village’s ADA sidewalk improvements.
Jessi Virtusio is a freelancer.
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