IDOT Reveals Willow Road Design Options

A man and his two young daughters meandered through a corridor of 49 poster boards in the New Trier High School cafeteria in Northfield Monday.

Pasted on many of the boards were satellite photos of the area surrounding Willow Road. The pictures, charts and drawings illustrated no fewer than 18 different potential solutions to the slower-than-molasses traffic jam that materializes on the thoroughfare for an hour at each end of the workday. The alternatives include everything from installing highway interchanges to making two-, three- or four-lane additions to Willow Road itself.

"What are those, Daddy?" asked one of the girls, pointing to an intersection highlighted on one of the photos.

"That's where they might put in a couple of traffic lights, I'm guessing," the man replied.

"What's that?" asked the other girl.

"Traffic circles, honey," he said.

The looks of bewilderment on the little girls' faces were mirrored by some of the residents who turned out to attend the second of two Community Advisory Group (CAG) presentations organized by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). Everyone had a different opinion.  

"It's overwhelming, isn't it?" said Pat Doherty, of Northfield. He favors a three-lane solution on Willow Road, not a massive expansion, which he said would radically alter the psyche of the town. "You see people staring blankly at these boards. This is an issue we've been debating for 40 years. At one point, everybody but Santa Clause had signed off on a solution. And now we're back to the trough, it seems."

Doherty, who has lived in Northfield nearly that entire time, said it's become a matter of suburb versus suburb.

"This is a fairly provincial thing to say, but it's a case of other villages intruding on Northfield's right for self-determination, which is supposed to be a force for good," he said.

Indeed—as represented by their citizens and elected officials at the meeting—each village seemed to have a distinct view about what should be done and where. 

Northbrook

"Three lanes just do not provide as much capacity, and you need more alternatives," said Northbrook Village Trustee Bob Israel, pointing on the map to places like Winnetka Avenue, which doesn't go all the way through to I-294. An engineer by training, Israel supports a four-lane solution with a curbed median. "That's it. You've got 25,000 cars going through there."

Glencoe 

"All the people in Glenview can't complain," Katie Hackbarth said. "There are four lanes where it's commercial, and it switches to two lanes where it's residential."

Hackbarth favors diverting traffic to Lake Avenue or Dundee and Lake Cook roads—and creating interchanges where they intersect with I-294. 

"To upset a town like Northfield—to totally change things and endanger their children—all for commercial interests…" she trailed off. 

Glenview

"It affects local roads in Northfield and in Glenview, too," said Don Owen, Glenview's deputy village manager and a member of the CAG. "I like a lot of these regional alternatives, but it won't help here on Willow Road. Not until you look at the Willow Road-specific alternatives do you solve the crash problem.”

Like many from Glenview, and IDOT it would seem, he wants to see a four-lane Willow Road with a median. Analysis done by IDOT indicates such a solution would not only lower the instances of crashes but also reduce congestion. To the organization, it's a no-brainer. 

Yet Owen said many people seem to be trusting their hearts rather than their heads. 

"It's an emotional issue," he added.

As if on cue, two Northfield women peppered John Bazcek, an IDOT engineer, with questions. 

"There's nothing about the environment here," said Victoria Frank. "When you have twice the traffic, it's more pollution."

"Especially when that traffic is trucks," agreed Susie White. "When they've done this in other places, people's gardens started dying. Who actually wants to widen the road?"

"A lot of people who don't live in Northfield," Frank said.

Bazcek opened and closed his mouth, but there was hardly time for him to get in a word. He pinched his fingers and fidgeted with his ring.

"Is widening the road really going to solve anything, or is this just someone's idea that opening an artery will help?" White asked. "Now, are you going to do anything with what we've said?"

At least on paper, IDOT seems to agree with Glenview residents, who tend to support a four-lane solution. With four lanes and a median, the agency predicts that crash rates would drop from 12.3 per year to 6.2, and the wait time at intersections would be 65 seconds per vehicle as opposed to 157. Under the so-called "Northfield Plan," which calls for a two-lane road with a median, crash rates would fall to 6.7 per year, but each car would still have to wait an estimated 151 seconds at intersections.

"We did traffic modeling," Baczek said. "If you do something here, how does it affect Willow Road? If you do something there, how does it affect Willow Road?

"What we found is that these [interchanges] aren't as effective as alterations to Willow Road itself. Everybody's concerned about safety, but a lot of people are concerned about mobility, too. And a lot of times, safety and mobility go hand in hand."

Monday's CAG meeting was the final meeting scheduled to introduce residents to the Willow Road alternatives. This summer, IDOT will further evaluate those options, and by fall engineers hope to have settled on their "preferred alternative." Next winter, there will be a public hearing to gather comments on the proposed plans. 

To learn more about all the possible solutions, visit www.willowroadfuture.org. Comments about Monday's meeting will be accepted until May 31.

Stay tuned: Patch is working on a primer of IDOT's 18 different solutions to the Willow Road quagmire. It'll be chock-full of data, numbers and statistics galore.