Went to Algonquin Saturday to Red Robin.
As we were returning to Crystal Lake, I noticed the Randall Road pothole in the photo below across from the old Citco Station, which I assume the McHenry County Transportation Department has already purchased.
How long will this Randall Road pothole be allowed to jar motorists?
Well if the county didn’t waste 1-2 years pushing a costly, unproven interchange they might have kicked it off quicker.
Take a drive on Alden Rd.
The residents, with the assistance of Diane Evertsen stopped the waste of millions in taxpayer dollars planned for widening that road.
What did the MCDOT do with the leadership of Anna May Miller?
They quit maintaining about one half of the total length of the road to the point where a gravel road would better serve the motorists!
The MCDOT is one bunch of spoiled brats who will do whatever they want to the detriment of the taxpayers!
Add to the Randall Rd fiasco, the current plan for more taxdollars being wasted on a roundabout at Charles Rd and Raffel!!!
For every public policy decision at the local level, there is a logical method for determining the best procedure.
All elected officials, whether County Board members, municipal council members or Township Road Commissioners, should follow a logical and TRANSPARENT procedure for justifying both need and expense.
For roads, the procedure is as follows:
(1) Determine the road’s capacity.
(2) Determine the utilization on an hourly basis to determine how often and how heavily traffic exceeds capacity.
(3) If it exceeds capacity, determine the cost to relieve congestion.
(4) Compare the cost to what other municipalities pay for road construction (usually measured by lane-mile).
(5) Divide the annual cost (amortized construction plus maintenance) by the number of BENEFITED users (i.e., only those during rush hours).
(6) Proceed ONLY if the cost per lane-mile is reasonable and ONLY if the cost to benefited motorists is reasonable.
None of this has been presented to the public or even the County Board to justify expanding Randall Road.
When I examined the statistics myself, I found the following:
(1) Traffic on the stretch of road under consideration has not increased in ten years. This is not surprising given that population has decreased.
(2) The justification for this project is 3% increase in population forever, which is clearly ridiculous.
(3) The road appears to be mildly congested at rush hour, and any improvement would be a matter of a couple of minutes for each rush hour commuter.
(4) The cost — which is a constantly moving target — was a multiple of what other Illinois governments pay.
(5) The average cost per benefited commuter was several times what users pay on the Illinois toll way.
Each time County Board members ask questions about such projects, they are told the project has already been approved because it was part of some giant wish list passed years ago.
Then the rest of their questions are ignored.
It’s time for the County Board to demand answers about ALL of the County’s road projects, not just to act like sheep and pass gold-plated, unnecessary projects without getting answers to basic questions.
Kudos to Steve.
Your posts are well thought out and well written.
I agree, particularly, with your analysis sequence.
Makes perfect sense to me and is an analysis that should be conducted.
Contact your county board member and walk them through it.
You may have to talk slowly.
On the other hand, Randall is terrible.
I avoid it, especially on weekends.
Will Randall Road Be Allowed To Deteriorate Until Widening?
The obvious answer would be yes, why waste money on lots of resurfacing if it then will be ripped up again.
We are just coming out of winter, the freeze thaw is just ending it’s most active time in causing potholes, pumping above services buried below, major humps once there will lay down in a few weeks.
The pothole pictured is hard to repair in the winter, other than just throwing some patch in it till the plow comes by and knocks it all out again, and the process starts over again.
It needs to be milled down or cut out, then filled with asphalt you can’t even get till mid April or May.
It isn’t even a good tire eater, we truly have gotten spoiled if that pothole is considered a major problem.
Has the county road crews temp filled it this year?
Has anybody called the County to complain about that pothole being a problem?
Does anybody have info on the Highway Committee members, or McDOT leadership, to not maintain that stretch of road as payback?
Isn’t this really a problem of lack of inspection and repair by McDOT crews, rather than some plot?
I’ll take a educated guess, the McDOT crews most likely missed it, or thought it a waste of time at this time to repair because of it’s size and the volume of potholes in that hood.
Rolling repair: Lead truck, truck with heated material trailer, two or three to handle material, follow truck with crash pad on back with arrow, two flaggers, warning signs most times.
Cost per hole repaired as Steve would say, where’s the BEEF.
Rush hours, weekends, holiday’s that are isn’t fun to drive around.
The majority of the time it’s not bad there, although left turn lanes on Randall could be doubled as they back up more than just during rush hours.
The highway Dept doesn’t bother with fixing roads any more,just take a drive down some of those in the rural areas.
Check out McGuire,Alden,Kishwaukee to name a few.
They seem to have forgotten that there job is not just to build roads but also to maintain them.