Pedestrian bridge linking DuPage forest preserves earns honors
The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County garnered two awards for its County Farm Road pedestrian bridge project in Hanover Park that connects Hawk Hollow and Mallard Lake forest preserves and completes a missing link in the 35-mile North Central DuPage Regional Trail.
The awards were issued by the American Public Works Association and American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois.
The bridge and one-mile trail connecting it to existing trails at Hawk Hollow and Mallard Lake provide a safe crossing over four-lane County Farm Road, a major arterial road that carries more than 28,000 vehicles per day.
It allows users to commute through the region by bicycle, reducing traffic congestion and pollution.
The North Central DuPage Regional Trail eventually will connect to Cook County via the West Branch DuPage River Trail.
The 388-foot-long bridge is a three-span prefabricated steel truss structure. The 160-foot main span crossing over the roadway was delivered to the project in three sections and spliced together on-site.
To accomplish this, County Farm Road was shut down for only 20 minutes at night, causing minimal disruption to traffic on the busy roadway.
To connect to the North Central DuPage Regional Trail east of County Farm Road, the 82-foot-long Keeneyville Creek bridge also needed to be built over a tributary of the West Branch DuPage River and its 400-foot-wide confluence, which posed its own challenges.
The work required hydraulic analysis, federal permitting and additional state and federal funding on top of forest preserve district and DuPage County funding for the project.
The project, completed within 95 working days on May 15, was a partnership between the forest preserve district and the Federal Highway Administration, DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, DuPage County Division of Transportation, village of Hanover Park and village of Roselle.
"The project is a great example of a successful partnership in permitting, engineering, construction and funding to get people safely across County Farm Road as they travel the regional trail," said Joe Cantore, president of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County.
"The team accomplished the goals of delivering the project safely, on schedule and within budget," Cantore added.
"This critical link to the regional trail system will improve safety, reduce congestion and provide accessibility to forest preserves, benefiting DuPage County residents for years to come," said Al Murphy, forest preserve commissioner representing District 6.
For information, call (630) 933-7200 or visit dupageforest.org.