Southland trails link communities to economic opportunities

By Steve Buchtel

Suburban America is discovering that jobs can be in other towns – heck, in other states – and communities can still compete with job centers by appealing to young urban families and active boomers with quality of life amenities. The second most desired amenity according to the National Association of Homebuilders is trails. Highway access is number one.

The towns and agencies along the I-355 extension understand this, evidenced by their work to turn an easement from the Illinois Tollway Authority within the corridor into the Veterans Memorial Trail. The trail runs roughly the length of the extension from Woodridge in DuPage County to New Lenox near Joliet in Will County. This work at the moment is on two different, but complimentary, tracks:

1. A trails subcommittee of the I-355 Local Advisory Committee has been deeply involved with the trail’s planning from the beginning. They hold the $70,000 raised by the Active Transportation Alliance’s (then the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation) Roll the Tollway event in 2007 for the trail’s construction. This group is applying for matching funds to begin preliminary engineering and survey work. The group is also is in the final stages of choosing an engineering firm for the project. The group includes: Dupage County, the Dupage County Forest Preserve District, Will County Forest Preserve District, Homer Glen, Woodridge, Lockport, and Lemont. The Tollway Authority attends these meetings regularly.

2. This year, a consortium of towns and agencies including New Lenox, Lemont, Homer Glen, Lockport and Will County formed the I-355 Corridor Planning Consortium to spend a $5,000 ComEd transformation grant to consolidate existing trail plans in and around the I-355 corridor. They hope the work will reveal opportunities to connect a regional trail network, using the Veterans Memorial Trail and the I&M Canal Trail as regional spines. They’re reviewing a draft map of all trail ideas ever proposed or built along the corridor, seeing what’s still feasible and where connections might be made.

I admit, right now things seem disjointed – I didn’t see familiar faces from the Veterans Memorial Trail Committee at the I-355 Corridor Planning Consortium meeting I attended in mid-November. But it’s early in the process, and I think this separation will dissolve. The work will bring them together, and I’ve made it my goal to accelerate that through my work at the Active Transportation Alliance.

There will certainly be time to work on partnership – the federal funding process for trails makes development glacially slow. I’d put construction of a Veterans Memorial Trail at five years out, with a target completion of 2016 – also an obvious goal for the Calumet-Sag Trail. After all, with Olympic mountain biking in Palos Forest Preserve and road racing in Lemont, these two corridors might play host to hundreds of thousands of spectators, many of whom could be shopping for that quality of life community where every garage is a trail head.

In the market place for growth, the Southland’s regional trails will put their communities out front.

Steve Buchtel is the Active Transportation Alliance’s Southland coordinator and can be reached at steve@activetrans.org or 708.922.3955