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SUGAR GROVE – The drive to complete the traffic interchange at Route 47 and Interstate 88 is shifting into the next gear.
The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority recently approved a $2.1 million contract with an Itasca-based engineering firm, Civiltech Engineering, to design the ramps and prepare construction bid documents for the work.
“To have the tollway approve this is fantastic,” Sugar Grove Village Administrator Brent Eichelberger said. “It’s a huge step forward in the project.”
The undertaking to finish the Sugar Grove Parkway interchange with the Reagan Memorial Tollway will finally give motorists in the Sugar Grove and Elburn areas a tollway connection to and from the east. Currently, the partial interchange between the parkway and the tollway consists of ramps only on the west side of Route 47.
The tollway board’s action means that the project remains on pace to give motorists the benefits of a full interchange as early as 2020, said Peter Johnston of GRAEF, an engineering consultant working with the village of Sugar Grove.
The work to be performed by Civiltech Engineering is limited to the actual interchange, Johnston said.
Two traffic signals on Route 47, serving the ramp entrances and exits north and south of the tollway, are included in the plan but would not be installed immediately.
The signals would be added when traffic warrants their installation, Johnston said.
Improvements to Route 47 from Waubonsee Community College south of the tollway to Green Road north of the tollway are a separate project and will be phased in later.
In construction parlance, Civiltech’s work is dubbed phase II engineering, with phase III of the project being actual construction.
Work is now expected to begin as early as 2019 and would last about a year.
Phase II will take the better part of two years, and land acquisition will take place at the same time, according to Steve Coffinbargar, the assistant director of transportation for the Kane County Division of Transportation.
More than half of financing for the project is coming from the tollway, while the Illinois Department of Transportation, Kane County and the village of Sugar Grove also have shares in the estimated $20 million cost for the interchange.
Kane County has committed $2 million to the project, Coffinbargar said, while IDOT’s share is expected to be $5 million.
Eichelberger said the village of Sugar Grove is expecting to pay $1 million toward the cost of the project. The existing tollway interchange is unusual for the Chicagoland area, not only because it provides access to and from only one direction, but because that direction is west.
The few other partial tollway interchanges in the region provide access to and from the east, allowing motorists to travel to Chicago and back.