January 27, 2021

Community partnership bridges the KRT gap

The Kickapoo Rail Trail, a 24.5-mile stretch of former railroad in Champaign and Vermilion counties, is making significant progress at its western and eastern ends with help from IDOT. To the west, a study was completed by IDOT’s District Bureau of Planning and Urbana-based Carle Health System that analyzed the potential of extending the trail west from its current terminus in east Urbana through downtown Urbana to Lincoln Avenue. To the east, work is finishing up on a 1-mile trail extension through Kickapoo State Park and the Vermilion County Fairgrounds, complete with a 88-foot high, 1,300-foot long bridge over the North Fork Vermilion River. Both developments enhance a trail corridor that brings economic, transportation and environmental benefits to Champaign-Urbana, Danville, and the communities along its path. Approximately 7.5 miles of this corridor is currently developed and open from Urbana to St. Joseph for hiking, biking and other non-motorized recreation.  Click here to learn more about the project.

District 6 truck wash cuts the grime and time

A new District 6 automatic truck washing facility in Springfield is helping highway maintainers hit the road quicker this winter by reducing a manual hourlong process to 2 minutes. Seventy plow trucks have utilized it this winter.   “This has been a huge time saver for our maintenance personnel,” says District 6 Operations Engineer Steve Beran. “We even saved time by having yards 20 miles away drive to Springfield and use the wash.”   Located in the Springfield West maintenance yard, the touchless truck wash uses a combination of high and low pH soaps and neutralizers to remove dirt and salt debris and then a high-pressure water rinse for the final cleaning. Chemicals and wash water are delivered from a spray nozzle framework within the wash bay the trucks slowly drive through.   The facility also has a built-in hand-held pressure washer with a 50-foot-long hose to allow highway maintainers to blast clean areas that need extra attention. This can be used at the entrance of the truck wash while waiting to enter the facility.   The wash is modeled after a truck wash in neighboring District 5 in Champaign. An initial test conducted last fall to wash as many trucks as possible in an hour surpassed its goal of washing 30 trucks in an hour, cleaning 35 trucks in 55 minutes.

District Updates

In District 1, one half of the new Montrose Avenue bridge is complete over Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway (Interstate 90/94) as part of a project to replace an outdated 64-year-old structure.    The bridge is a cast-in-place, three-unit concrete structure spanning 14 lanes of traffic and the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line near the junction of the Kennedy and Edens expressways. The south half was removed over the course of three weekends to prepare for the construction of new bridge and to minimize the impact to traffic.   Work has begun to remove the north half. Construction of the new bridge will begin soon afterward. The project is anticipated to wrap up this summer. District 5 is nearing completion of several improvements to the Funks Grove Rest Area on Interstate 55 south of Bloomington. As part of a larger project statewide to increase truck parking capacity, the northbound truck parking lot was expanded to add 18 spaces and convert four existing spaces into two handicapped-accessible spots. The rest area stayed open during construction, which wraps up this spring.   The $1.1 million project was 80 percent funded through the National Highway Freight Program with the remaining 20 percent coming from the state. Built in 1985, the rest area serves an average of 1,700 visitors each day and is one of the state’s few stops that serves both directions of the interstate. ‌

IDOT offers free subscription email services to anyone interested in finding out more about construction projects and work zones, IDOT initiatives, important safety messages and more. Subscribe to IDOT in Motion or update your preferred email lists today.

Get Local Updates

idot.illinois.gov

‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌