Another $10 million approved for Randall Road widening project

A project to widen and improve Randall Road is moving forward after the McHenry County Board approved spending an additional $10 million on land acquisition.

The project is expected to mitigate traffic congestion along the busy corridor and ameliorate safety at the Algonquin Road and Randall Road intersection, where hundreds of traffic accidents occur each year, said Jeffrey Young, assistant county engineer with the McHenry County Division of Transportation.

Costing roughly $65.7 million, the first phase of the project would widen Randall Road to three lanes each way from Polaris Drive in Lake in the Hills south to Harnish Drive in Algonquin. It would also add more turn lanes and make other improvements to the Algonquin Road intersection.

Though not yet on the county's five-year construction plan, a second phase could improve Randall Road from Polaris Drive to Ackman Road, according to the project website.

Roughly $9 million has been spent to date on design engineering and land acquisition, Young said. The county board voted 14-8 this week to appropriate another $10 million toward buying more land for the right of way.

Having been in the works for nearly a decade, the project has been heavily debated by county officials, board Chairman Joe Gottemoller said. Some board members think the project is financially burdensome, he said, while others understand its necessity.

"It is an expensive project, but it's also the most heavily traveled intersection in northwest Illinois," Gottemoller said. " ... You've got a bottleneck there and it needs to be fixed."

The county has already reduced the scope of the project, originally expected to cost more than $100 million, by cutting a northern leg of Randall Road from the plans and nixing an idea to create a continuous-flow intersection at Randall and Algonquin roads, Young said.

With $10.6 million in federal funding promised for the project, he added, the county will have to pay roughly $55 million.

The county board will vote again on the project during the construction engineering process, which is expected to begin next year, Young said. Construction will likely begin in fall 2017.