Engineers: Building pedestrian tunnel in Glen Ellyn will be noisy

Despite being months away from construction, Glen Ellyn engineers already are cautioning that building a new pedestrian tunnel along Taylor Avenue will take some heavy — and noisy — machinery.

At the earliest, crews would break ground on the project in spring 2017.

But village-hired engineers told trustees Monday the neighborhood southeast of Glenbard West High School should brace for about two weeks of road closures and detours, though the project would take longer to complete.

As his firm prepares for the second round of an engineering study into the tunnel, Mike Magnuson, a project manager from Alfred Benesch & Co., painted a picture of the construction zone that would be set up on Taylor Avenue below the Union Pacific railroad tracks.

A crane, for instance, would carry the equipment that digs a hole through the ground to make way for the tunnel — essentially a steel pipe that would arrive to the neighborhood in about 10-foot sections, Magnuson said.

That drilling work potentially could be done for roughly 24 hours starting on a Friday night, when there would be the least amount of train traffic, but officials haven't yet firmed up those details.

“It's pretty noisy,” Magnuson said of that phase of the project.

While he acknowledged the disruptions from construction, Village President Alex Demos noted the end result will “provide something that is so important to the community.”

He and other officials have long touted the project's safety benefits for pedestrians and cyclists who currently navigate an existing underpass on Taylor.

Through that tunnel, they now walk single-file on a 3-foot-wide path that engineers say isn't set back far enough from the road.

Drivers also move through the underpass — one vehicle at a time.

But while they're guided by traffic signals, pedestrians are not.

Construction of the new tunnel — allowing pedestrians to sidestep the tracks away from cars — is estimated to cost $2.6 million.

But a federal grant will cover 80 percent of eligible construction costs, up to a $2.3 million cap.

Next month, the village expects to receive preliminary approvals from the Illinois Department of Transporation for the proposal, which calls for the pipe to be installed directly east of the existing tunnel.

Engineering consultants have now recommended a smaller pipe — 12 feet in diameter, down from 14 — because of the constraints of the site.

A new 8-foot-wide concrete path also would run from Willis Street to the north, through the tunnel and end at Walnut Street to the south.

The path in the existing underpass, meanwhile, would be removed, and the pavement would be widened to 13 feet to allow traffic to maneuver more easily in between the walls.