Future of Randall Road Widening Project to be Discussed at Future Meeting

MCHENRY COUNTY, IL - The long-planned Randall Road widening project has hit a road bump.

The McHenry County Board’s Transportation Committee recently rejected spending $10 million toward a land purchase to help move the project forward, the Northwest Herald reports in a May 3 article. This lead to a lengthy debate among board members last week. The board, which has a growing number of members questioning the necessity of the widening project in its current form or at all, has agreed to meet in the future to discuss the future of the project.

Village officials in Algonquin and Lake in the Hills say the widening of Randall Road is needed to attract new and keep current businesses along the busy thoroughfare, according to a Monday Northwest Herald. Village Board President John Schmitt predicts “total chaos” if the project is killed and says business owners are “absolutely terrified” by the idea of the widening project not moving forward.

“They just shake their heads, like, ‘what is wrong with these people?’” Schmitt told the Northwest Herald. “The traffic on Randall Road is so bad on the weekends, people don’t want to come here to shop, and it’s hurting their businesses,”

Traffic woes along Randall Road have been an ongoing issue for years and the $97 million widening project is expected to address just that. So far, $19 million has been spent for engineering and land acquisition.

This project is to be constructed in two major segments (from south to north). The first segment would be constructed from Harnish Drive to Acorn Lane/Polaris Drive, including the Randall/Algonquin intersection and the second segment would be constructed from Acorn Lane/Polaris Drive to Ackman Road Construction is currently slated to begin in 2017 and wrap up by 2019.

More via the Randall Road Corridor Improvements website and the Northwest Herald