St. Charles gets long-awaited bridge

St. Charles doesn't have a bridge to nowhere, but for the past 14 years is has had a bridge project that went nowhere.

Next year, it's time will have arrived.

The Kane County Board is set to approve an agreement with the St. Charles Park District next week that will snip the last strands of red tape blocking a pedestrian bridge over Randall Road since 1994.

The park district hoped to build the pedestrian bridge in the mid-1990s when trying to tie the 4.5-mile Randall Road Trail into the Great Western Trail. The Randall Road Trail was built. The bridge never materialized.

Dennis Ryan, superintendent of parks and planning for the St. Charles Park District, said the bridge plan stagnated during multiple reviews by the Illinois Department of Transportation and changes in where the bridge should actually be placed.

"It was almost like building another bridge over the Fox River," Ryan said of the review process.

Eventually the site of the intersection at Silver Glen Road became the favored bridge crossing spot. By then, the costs to build the bridge had escalated almost as much as traffic on Randall Road.

Today, only I-90 sees more cars a day in Kane County than Randall Road, according to the Kane County Division of Transportation. And the park district had to secure an additional $332,000 on top of the $1.3 million it had already dedicated to the project to accommodate construction cost increases.

So, yes, St. Charles will finally get its bridge, Ryan said. But the bridge will carry a much higher price tag. Ryan is just hoping the money they currently have tied to the project is enough.

IDOT will let the project out for bids at the start of 2009. Assuming the bids that come back match the dollars the park district has, construction on the pedestrian bridge will begin in early spring of 2009.