Naperville designing sound wall into North Aurora Road widening
A long-planned road-widening project in Naperville still has a couple of years of planning to go, but one new element was added to designs this week: A sound wall.
The city council approved a cost increase to a design contract with TranSystems Corporation of Schaumburg to incorporate two sections of a sound wall to protect about a dozen houses near North Aurora Road. The road is set to be widened to two lanes in each direction with a center turn lane between Fairway Drive on the east and Frontenac Road on the west.
The price increase of $38,275 brings the total contract cost for design engineering to $1,380,948.
The design work comes before construction, which is anticipated to occur in 2020 with the aid of a $6 million federal grant, said Bill Novack, director of transportation, engineering and development. Construction will culminate a process the city and the Naperville Township road district have been working on since 2008, but it will come after land acquisition and permitting, Novack said.
The sound wall to be added into designs will be constructed at the same time as the road improvements. The city projects the wall to be 10 feet tall with a smaller section to the east that will be about 280 feet long, and a longer western section of 780 feet.
The wall will protect houses on Whispering Winds Drive, which is just north of North Aurora Road and west of Country Lakes Park.
Included in the city's 2017 design engineering contract with TranSystems Corporation was the completion of a sound study. But because it was unknown if the study would determine a wall was warranted, no money for wall design was rolled into the agreement.
Tuesday's city council action, by a unanimous vote, changed that by granting the funds to design the wall.
When constructed, the widened road also will include updated traffic signals and a shared-use path for people on foot or bike on the south side of the road.
Officials say this widening project will help ease a known traffic bottleneck in east-west travel between Naperville and Aurora.