QC shares input on Andalusia-Indian Bluff east-west corridor study

MILAN – A stream of visitors made their way to the village’s Camden Centre conference room on Wednesday, April 9, to share their thoughts on improvements proposed for a critical and heavily traveled east-west Illinois Quad Cities corridor. That 8.3-mile-long Andalusia Road – Indian Bluff Road artery from Turkey Hollow Road to U.S. 150 was […]

MILAN – A stream of visitors made their way to the village's Camden Centre conference room on Wednesday, April 9, to share their thoughts on improvements proposed for a critical and heavily traveled east-west Illinois Quad Cities corridor.

That 8.3-mile-long Andalusia Road – Indian Bluff Road artery from Turkey Hollow Road to U.S. 150 was initially selected for study "because of the various kinds of land uses and the different users of the road,” Bi-State Regional Commission Deputy Director Gena McCullough said as attendees talked about the options and added sticky notes to the large maps laid out on tables. “From the folks that live in residential areas to the people who work in the corridor to the freight movement, there’s a lot going on,” Ms. McCullough said. Because of that the cities of Rock Island, Moline and Milan and Rock Island County came together and decided “this will really be an important corridor to look at,” she added. It was the last meeting on the second phase of a project that began earlier this year asking for suggestions for the roads from those who use them. For details about the project go here. On Wednesday, Bi-State and Chicago-based transportation planner Benesch were seeking stakeholders’ views on a number of alternative solutions to challenges uncovered through that initial overview study. If you missed the latest session, however, there still is time to provide input on the project. Comments and suggestions will be accepted through Wednesday, May 7,  via email at [email protected]. The potential recommendations featured on posterboards at the open house ranged from the relatively simple including – creating bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly shoulders – to the more complex projects  such as creating roundabouts and acceleration lanes.

Businesses offer feedback

Ms. McCullough said Bi-State has been pleased with the public’s involvement including from business owners “who are really giving us some good feedback” about what they’d like to see in the busy segment that also includes both Rock Island’s and Milan’s industrial parks and the Quad Cities International Airport, which is interested in exploring industrial development there.

Bi-State Planner Bryan Schmid, who is the lead planner on the corridor study, told the QCBJ he is hoping that their interest and feedback “will help the four communities build the transportation system that’s needed as well as what residents want,” he said. Safety, he said, is a “huge aspect” of the study and its mission. He pointed to a tour Bi-State hosted with consultants where they saw bicyclists and pedestrians gathered in a parking lot in Milan. They watched as a pedestrian who had just exited a bus dashed through traffic to get to the Walgreens across the street. In addition, Mr. Schmid said “There are a lot of locations where crashes have resulted in serious injuries and unfortunately a couple of fatalities, too. And any time there’s a fatality it’s unacceptable.” Bi-State’s aim as it works to update its transportation safety plan is “zero fatalities or serious injuries regionwide but we have to take small steps to get there and having an unified vision with an eye toward safety will help us take some of the steps we need in that corridor,” he said. Ms. McCullough added that with this study Bi-State “wanted to provide better facilities for the lower-income folks who actually live there, and the ones that might not live on the corridor but they live in other places in the Quad Cities and they need that corridor to get to work.”

Bike, walk paths included

Many of the area residents must walk long distances on busy roads to get to and from their buses. To address that, planner recommendations include “a side-use path or a trail where there is an ability at certain locations to have transit stops because right now the bus just pulls off and the people get out and they have to cross a busy road,” Ms. McCullough said. Milan Village Administrator Steve Seiver told the QCBJ, “This corridor is very interesting because it has everything. It has residential, industrial, wetlands, recreation. There are issues with flooding on parts of it, and railroads and the constraints of right-of-way. You've got wetlands on the other side and not a whole lot of room in between.” With all those users, he added, "you have safety concerns with heavy truck traffic serving all the industry along the corridor and still bicyclists and pedestrians are using the same space.” The corridor also is often congested.  “We’re lucky in the Quad Cities because there’s not a lot of places that get congested where it takes eight to 10 minutes to get through,” he said. That’s not true of parts of the corridor when “there are times when it’s every bit of that.” The administrator said he’s pleased with both the study’s progress and public input, which will be key as Benesech – the experienced transportation planning firm that was part of the bridge design team for the award-winning Quad Cities Interstate 74 Bridge –  moves forward with the next phase. 

What comes next?

The goal of this round of corridor public input sessions is “really unveiling the plan's potential alternatives," Ms. McCullough explained. “The next step would be to look at different segments that the communities could implement based on their recommendations. They’d have to move the projects further through engineering.” Bi-State leaders stressed that these studies are just the first steps in a long process.  Ms. McCullough called it a progression and the process is designed to let people know that these are concepts and ideas but it’s just the start. “Because it’s a planning study, it's just the start of the conversation and so each of the cities will have to take back the information, and similar to what we did with Illinois 92, there’s work that’s starting to happen there,” she said.  “But it does take time for communities to find out: does this work within their capital improvement programs, do they have the funding to move it from the planning study to the engineering study and do they have the funds to construct it.” She added “The ideas are first; get them on paper and channel people toward them.”