The following notice has arrived from the McHenry County Department of Transportation:
WORKSHOP NOTICE
The DIVISION OF TRANSPORTATION has scheduled County Board Workshop meetings for the purpose of discussing the 5-Year Transportation Program on the following dates:
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 10:00 a.m.
- Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 2:00 p.m.
- Friday, April 24, 2015 at 11:00 a.m.
All meetings will be held at: McHenry County Division of Transportation, 16111 Nelson Road, Woodstock, IL 60098.
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I’d observe that no meeting is scheduled at night and all meetings are scheduled in a sparsely-populated part of McHenry County, one that is on virtually no one’s beaten track.
Below is a map of how to find the place:
Location of the public hearings on McHenry County roads for the next five years.
That;s the address of the McHenry County Transportation facility.
It’s right next to Valley Hi, the County Nursing home.
For every public policy decision, there are objective, evidence-based criteria for making decisions. This includes roads.
There are explicit, nationally accepted algorithms that engineers use to determine if a road has exceeded its capacity and needs to be widened, different algorithms for each type of road: city street, rural highway, Interstate, etc.
The standard by which the County decides what roads need to be expanded should be explicit and documented, as should the data that apply to that standard.
So, if you go, Cal, ask them for the specific algorithm they use to determine a road has exceeded its capacity, and the data that apply to that formula, and the source for the formula.
And ask them if the “need” is based partly on CMAP’s faulty population projections. Any projection of need based on population growth should be scrapped.
McHenry County has been declining in population for seven or eight years.
If we didn’t need wider roads ten years ago, why do we need them now? To make it easier for people to leave the County?
There are also useful national comparisons for the cost of building each type of road.
The County budgets literally as much as ten times what other states pay to build identical roads.
Let me be clear about this last point.
First, we shouldn’t build something we don’t need.
Second, “need” is a function of cost.
A project that makes sense at $8 million a mile might make no sense at $30 million or $50 million a mile.
Which leads directly to the third point: we should not overpay for roads, and our County Board should demand very specific justification for any cost higher than what other states pay.
I would love to attend this meeting, but I seem to recall having work on Wednesday and Friday.
The meetings should be video and audio taped and put on the Division of Transportation website.
Any documents or presentations presented at the meeting should be placed on the Division of Transportation website.
The Division of Transportation website has a “Future Construction” tab.
http://www.co.mchenry.il.us/county-government/departments-j-z/transportation/future-construction
The Division of Transportation has a Public Transportation Advisory Committee (PTAC) whose members are appointed by the Transportation Committee of the McHenry County Board.
There’s no members of that committee from the public at large as citizens though; they are all associated with units of government or non-profits.
http://www.co.mchenry.il.us/county-government/departments-j-z/transportation/public-transportation-advisory-committee-ptac
An easier URL for the website is http://www.mchenrycountydot.org.
Plenty of other information on the website.