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Environmental assessment delays Weiland Road project

A $78 million plan for improvements to Weiland Road/Prairie Road and Lake-Cook Road in Buffalo Grove is fading into the future as a hearing planned for this summer now is unlikely to take place until January, according to the project engineer and Buffalo Grove officials.

At issue is a delay in getting the Federal Highway Administration to sign off on the environmental assessment done as part of the Phase 1 Engineering Study.

As a result, the date for a public hearing, which had been expected this summer, will be pushed back to at least November, said Robert Andres, principal engineer with Civiltech Engineering of Itasca, the firm conducting the engineering study.

“We can’t go to the public before the Federal Highway Administration releases the environmental assessment,” he said Monday at the Buffalo Grove Village Board meeting.

Buffalo Grove Village Manager Dane Bragg wasn’t optimistic about a public hearing occurring before the holidays. “Probably January would be my best guess,” he said.

Improvements have been proposed on Weiland Road from Buffalo Grove Road to Aptakisic Road, on Prairie Road from Aptakisic Road to Route 22, and on Lake-Cook Road between Hastings Lane and Raupp Boulevard.

The process began in 2009 with the first of two public information meetings. Last year, two neighborhood meetings drew big crowds. At the second one, which lasted four hours, some of the almost 100 residents present booed village officials because they felt their concerns about child safety with the widened road weren’t getting an adequate response.

Andres outlined changes in the plan to make it more hospitable to the neighbors.

“We have worked to develop a proposed improvement plan that strikes a balance between the village’s transportation needs and the needs of the adjacent property owners and the neighborhoods along Weiland Road and Lake-Cook Road,” Andres said Monday.

He said the roadway alignment near the Mirielle subdivision has been shifted, with the roadway moved 20 feet away from the subdivision in order to provide a 30-foot-wide landscape buffer.

In addition, the bikeway has been shifted to the west, while the plan includes bicycle friendly lanes along Weiland Road.

He said the revised plan also includes two noise walls, one along the south side of Lake-Cook Road west of Lexington Drive and another along the west side of Weiland Road north of Newtown Drive.

A traffic signal would be installed at Thompson Boulevard and Weiland Road, while pedestrian activated flashing beacons would be put in where Weiland Road intersects Newtown Drive and Brandywyn Lane.

He said, “We submitted a draft EA (environmental assessment) last November and thought we could have a public meeting this summer,” but the Illinois Department of Transportation, which reviews the assessment before it gets to the highway administration, did not complete its review. “They since have changed their format for the EA and sent it back to us last month, asking us to revise it before they review it one more time.”

He said it was resubmitted to the department last week.

The improvements will be financed mostly with federal funds funneled through a variety of sources, including the Lake County Council of Mayors, the Northwest Municipal Conference, Illinois Department of Transportation, Lake County Division of Transportation and the Cook County Highway Department.

Residents blast Weiland plans

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