Arlington Hts. looks for traffic solutions

Faced with no way to reduce traffic for some neighbors of Northwest Community Hospital without increasing it for others, Arlington Heights trustees on Monday asked the village to combine input from both residents and a consultant to come up with a new plan.

At the urging of Mayor Arlene Mulder, the board also requested a meeting with representatives of the Illinois Department of Transportation and Cook County to see if they could offer solutions, since those bodies govern traffic signals on major streets in the area.

Village staff will continue to monitor traffic after changes in the area, such as when the new hospital pavilion opens May 1, said Diana Mikula, assistant to the village manager.

The small "triangle" neighborhood east of the hospital bordered by Kirchoff and Central roads receives considerable "cut-through" traffic, but only 10 percent of it comes from the hospital, according to the study by consultants Hampton, Lenzini and Renwick.

Two relatively low-cost suggestions from the consultant include improving traffic flow at major intersections so drivers are not encouraged to seek shortcuts, and allowing traffic to exit north from the hospital campus onto Kirchoff Road. Traffic from the hospital has been routed south onto Central Road since 2002.

Perhaps the most impassioned speaker Monday was John Behof, who lives in that triangle neighborhood.

He said it is only fair to allow people to exit the campus onto Kirchoff Road so that traffic through his neighborhood would be reduced.

This would pour another 2,000 or 3,000 people onto Kirchoff every day, said Bob Galvanoni, who lives north of Kirchoff on Kennicott Avenue.

The consultants also suggested investigating traffic lights for the intersections of Dwyer and Ridge avenues at Kirchoff.

Residents north of Kirchoff have said signals would bring more traffic onto those streets, endangering children who attend three schools in the area.

Village traffic engineer Tom Ponsot said 477 of the 623 vehicles observed cutting through the triangle on Walnut Avenue in a 12-hour period were registered in Arlington Heights.

He also said traffic on the major arterial streets in the area has decreased this decade. For example, Central Road had 16,000 vehicles a day in 2001, 18,000 in 2003 and 13,000 in the latest count.