Dupage Policy Journal

At its Nov. 15 meeting, the Bolingbrook Village Board approved an amendment to an intergovernmental agreement that provides more funding for a road improvement project.

Bolingbrook has an intergovernmental agreement with the villages of Romeoville and Plainfield in regards to sharing the cost of a roadway project on I-55. The original agreement to the project, which specifically concerns I-55 at I-126 and I-55 at Airport Road, was entered into during August of 2009. It has since been changed twice, in July of 2011 and July of 2019.

Due to increased costs of the study, which is part of the Phase One engineering work, the agreement had to be modified again to reflect the current price of the project that will be split between the three municipalities as agreed. The new price to be shared among the three communities is $3,301,363.22, which means the village will pay $94,166.93.

The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has budgeted $170 million for the project, and it will take over once this first phase is completed. The village hopes to reduce traffic in other areas of the villages by doing this and creating new routes that are more efficient. The board approved the change and moved forward with the project.

“We actually started the interchange study for a full interchange at Route 126 and Route I-55 on our own,” Lucas Rickelman, a co-administrator for Bolingbrook, said. “At the same time, Romeoville had been looking at the Airport Road interchange, and one of the comments we got back from IDOT was that we needed to combine the two studies. So we went to Plainfield and worked with them as well and got all three communities and that’s how we came up with the initial agreement. 

Rickelman said the first phase of engineering is done.

"This basically completes the first phase of engineering which includes all the environmental, kind of a preliminary design and gets that access justification report done which is required by the Federal Highway Administration," Rickelman said. "After that point we will turn the project over to IDOT and that’s where the $170 million comes in, for both the interchanges, and they will complete the actual final engineering and then that’s construction, land acquisition and any utility relocation.”

The village board uploaded the livestream of its public meeting on the village’s website.

The village board also discussed purchasing rock salt from Morton Salt through the Illinois Joint Purchasing Program. The village plans to purchase 4,600 tons of salt at $76.63 per ton.