The summer of our (driving) discontent

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Just past the fence encircling the back yard of George Radcliffe’s Frankfort home are remnants of the old Lincoln Highway — a section of long-abandoned pavement and a concrete right-of-way marker that appears to be decades old.

By the fall of next year, if all goes according to plan, a new four-lane road carrying thousands more vehicles will pass his house. Getting to that point will, at times, be a pain for the people who live near, as well as travel on,
U.S. 30.

With the summer driving season getting under way, the summer road construction season is coming along for the ride. And it’s not just along the stretch of U.S. 30 that’s being widened where the going will get rougher as the temperatures rise.

Work going on now in Orland Park at LaGrange Road and 143rd Street is just a taste of what’s to come. Construction of a new Metra rail bridge over LaGrange north of 143rd gets going later this summer, then a full-blown widening of LaGrange between 131st and 179th streets kicks off next year.

Thrown in for good measure is a big resurfacing project along Interstate 80 that’s prompted temporary lane closings in Joliet and has caused monster backups. The resurfacing is being done in conjunction with a widening of the interstate that will add a lane in each direction between U.S. 30 and LaGrange.

In other words, getting around the Southland is going to require a lot of patience.

Radcliffe takes a Zen-like approach to the prospect of heavy earth-moving equipment and cement trucks rumbling past the house he and his wife have lived in for 30 years.

“It’s going to be a change and we knew it was coming some day,” the retired teacher said. “The (new) road will be a big improvement over what we have.”

In the meantime — if you haven’t already — pick yourself a good alternate route and stick with it.

The good news is that, with the exception of I-80, none of the work will result in long-term lane closures. But as with any road project, traffic delays are to be expected.

“It’s already congested,” Mokena village administrator John Downs said of U.S. 30, “so anything that creates a diversion for people will cause traffic to slow down.”

‘Creates a little bit of heartburn’

Unlike the major rebuilding of the intersection of LaGrange and 159th that was finished in the summer of 2008, Orland Park, rather than the state, is overseeing the 143rd Street project. It’s been using tools such as regular email blasts to keep businesses in the area and others informed about the status of the work and putting up signs to help drivers navigate their way through the intersection.

Acknowledging that any sort of roadwork “creates a little bit of heartburn,” Paul Grimes, Orland’s village manager, said the village has “bent over backward to help minimize disruptions, minimize the pain and suffering.”

There’s a steering committee, including chamber of commerce members, that regularly meets with village staff to talk about the work and what’s coming down the pike.

“It seems like they (village officials) are trying to work real well with the businesses,” Keloryn Putnam, executive director of the Orland Park Area Chamber of Commerce, said.

It’s not by coincidence that the bulk of construction is expected to be done by mid-November, before the holiday shopping season gets under way.

“This is our lifeblood as well,” Grimes said of mall-laden LaGrange Road. “The community relies a lot on sales tax revenue.”

Like the LaGrange/159th redo, Putnam keeps telling herself how much easier it will be to get around after the 143rd work is over.

“On the other side it will be really good,” she said. “We just have to get through it right now.”

But then work starts later this summer on a new Metra rail bridge north of 143rd, which could result in some short-term lane closures during off-peak hours, said Guy Tridgell, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation. The new bridge — it will be just to the south of the current bridge — will accommodate the widening of LaGrange Road, which IDOT expects to start in late spring or early summer of 2012, with a scheduled completion for late 2013. Like yanking wisdom teeth or a ripping off a bandage, IDOT thinks it’s best to do the entire stretch all at once rather than in stages.

Worries at Abe’s roadside inn

Long before I-80 crisscrossed the country, travelers saw the USA cruising along Lincoln Highway. At the end of the day they stopped for the night at places such as the Abe Lincoln Motel, which opened in 1955 in Frankfort Township.

Not many weary travelers are checking in these days, and the motel’s tenants tend to be of the long-term variety. One’s been there more than two years, according to Karen Gasser, who’s been general manager of the motel for almost five years and lives at the property.

The road widening will eat up about 50 feet of the motel’s front yard, and the property owners want to sell the Abe Lincoln and the three acres it sits on. Gasser said she tried to persuade the owners to seek historical status for the motel from the federal government.

“It’s a really lovely place and I would hate to see it go,” she said of her home.

At Radcliffe’s home, he’s looking at a couple of mature white pines that will have to be cut back, or perhaps cut down, to make way for a 15-foot noise barrier the state plans to erect next to his house as part of the U.S. 30 widening project.

“As I understood it, the wall will be about one foot from my fence,” he said.

Where he’s at on Hackberry Road, between LaGrange and Elsner roads, there’s no traffic light. Trying to make a turn heading east on U.S. 30 is hazardous as it is, and he’s worried about what will happen with a wider, and busier, road.

“Right now, 16,500 cars go by here every day,” he said, gesturing to traffic zipping by. “By 2020, they’re saying that it will be
25,000.”