18 ways to tame Millburn 'strangler'

Route 45 study will continue through 2011

LINDENHURST -- Residents interested in the Millburn bypass can look forward to an update on the project in April.

The community advisory group to the Millburn bypass study at its second meeting reviewed and rated 18 alternative routes for the project that will reroute the intersections of Grass Lake and Millburn roads at Route 45 away from the historic Millburn district and clear up a traffic bottleneck.

Route 45 is a heavily traveled north-south link from the Wisconsin border south to Chicago's northern suburbs. The section of Route 45 slated for the bypass is from Sand Lake Road to about a half-mile north of Grass Lake Road and would bypass the Millburn Historic District.

"We went through proposed alternative east-west and north-south routes that were gathered from the public meeting held in the spring," said Lindenhurst CAG representative Dominic Marturano. "We looked at 18 different combinations and narrowed them down to some viable alternatives."

The alternatives that the 30-member group favored will be evaluated by project engineers based on 30 different criteria, for example, one criterion will be impact to local homeowners.

"We agreed all north-south routes should be evaluated. It will be interesting to see a scaled down list of alternative routes when we meet again in April," Marturano said.

Following the third CAG meeting, a session to update the general public will be scheduled, followed by two more CAG meetings and a public hearing on the final proposed route.

"These advisory meetings are part of a two-year effort to evaluate and recommend a design for the bypass," Marturano said.

At the first CAG session, the group put together a mission statement that the object of the bypass was to resolve traffic congestion. "But a lot of other issues have to be addressed, including environmental, health and safety, impact on residents, among others," Marturano said.

Engineering for the bypass won't begin until after December 2011, following the public hearing, he said.

The advisory group is made up of representatives from communities in the bypass area, including Lindenhurst, Old Mill Creek and Millburn. Neighboring homeowners associations in Lindenhurst are also represented because some of the alternative routes are through or adjacent to those subdivisions, Marturano said.

Running concurrent with the advisory group's meetings are engineering and environmental studies by Lake County Division of Transportation, in coordination with the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Although IDOT previously studied the area, this new study is considered a fresh look at the purpose and need for the project.

"We are part of evaluating all of the reasonable alternatives for the Millburn bypass," Marturano said, which could reroute Route 45 in a variety of configurations.

"What we are doing up until December 2011 doesn't build it, it just will show us what we can build if we have the money."

More on the bypass

For more information about the project, go to www.Millburnbypasstudy.org