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Illinois State Senate Candidate Bill Gentes
Transportation
The Issues:
- The increasing traffic gridlock throughout Lake and eastern McHenry counties, most notably on major roads.
- Limited public transportation to reduce traffic.
- Traffic on Lake and McHenry counties' roads has grown by nearly 60% in the past 15 years.
- Traffic capacity has been increased by less than 10% over the past 20 years
The Impacts:
- Gridlock on most major roads during peak traffic periods, which is growing annually.
- Inability for many people to seek employment at any significant distance from where they live.
- Limits incentives for businesses to open in Lake and McHenry Counties.
- Lack of accessible public transportation for those who need it.
The Actions:
- Where possible some of the major east-west and north-south roads should have additional lanes added and/or major intersections widened in all areas of the district (Routes 12, 176, 83, 21, 31 and 45 for example). Some quick fix relief can occur by widening major intersections to allow traffic to flow through the intersection more quickly. Each major intersection should minimally have two flow through lanes, a right turn lane and a left turn lane. The flow through lanes should be at least 500 feet from the intersection in each direction.
- Where viable public transportation should be expanded throughout the suburban area, with trains as well as buses. To be effective this sort of transportation needs to be easily accessible, convenient and timely.
- In the long term, we need to plan and move forward on the Route 53 extension to Route 120 and west and east from there. Ultimately, road improvements on surface roads will not be sufficient to handle the continuing and rapid growth in Lake County and portions of McHenry County.
- The movement on the STAR commuter train option on E & J rail tracks should be accelerated. If this commuter train system is viable then we should move forward with the preliminary study and planning now, not five years from now.
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