Naperville resident promises persistence in push for sound wall
Traffic along 95th Street will be coming a few feet closer to Diane O'Connor's house once a road construction project wraps up this fall.
With it, the Naperville resident says, will come extra noise.
O'Connor and her neighbors are seeking a sound wall behind their homes to block out what they say will be louder sounds from the street, which is getting additional turn lanes at Plainfield/Naperville Road. The work is a $6.5 million road project led by the Illinois Department of Transportation and Will County.
A sound wall at O'Connor's location on the northwest corner of the intersection is not included in the project because the Federal Highway Administration determined construction will not change the road's proximity to the houses enough to warrant such protection, said Jeff Ronaldson, Will County engineer and director of transportation.
But O'Connor said she is researching how to appeal that decision and the fact a sound study of noise conditions was not conducted before construction began in April.
"I'm persistent," she said. "I'm not giving up."
City council members in Naperville, who have heard concerns from O'Connor and her neighbors for the past few weeks, aren't as optimistic.
"I don't have great hopes it would be something as extensive as a sound wall, as nice as that would be," said city council member Judith Brodhead, whose house also backs up to 95th Street. "There are probably some mitigating things we can do, and we'll continue to work on that."
O'Connor says she understands noise during the construction project, which is adding double left-turn lanes in both directions of Plainfield/Naperville Road and dedicated right-turn lanes at the intersection's northeast and northwest corners. But she worries about the aftermath, when a wider road could lead to more and faster-traveling traffic.
"We have more traffic, we have more noise, and it is a safety concern also," she said.
Twice since 2000, when she moved into her house on Rolling Meadows Drive, O'Connor said cars have crashed through an 8-foot-tall fence installed in 1995, damaging her property. She said her subdivision deserves the protection of a sound wall like the barriers that will be installed as part of the project behind houses east of Plainfield/Naperville Road.
Bill Novack, Naperville's director of transportation, engineering and development, said it's unlikely the Federal Highway Administration will allow a sound study now or authorize a wall that construction has begun. But Mayor Steve Chirico said the city will continue to look for ways to help.
"I empathize with this situation. It is problematic," he said. "Hopefully we can find some sort of solution."