Updated 2/6/2010 - Prairie Parkway News Coverage | August 2008 Newsletter (pdf) | Contact us
llinois Department of Transportation has quietly removed most funding for the proposed Prairie Parkway from its six-year Highway Improvement Program including all money designated to begin actual construction. It has also modestly increased the planned funding for Illinois 47 widening from south of Yorkville to Sugar Grove. Meanwhile, Congressman Bill Foster is readying legislation for shift federal funds designated for the Prairie Parkway to improvements and expansion of Illinois 47 between I-80 and I-88. The 2005 federal transportation bill included earmarks totaling $207 million for the proposed Prairie Parkway -- which carries a total cost of about $1 billion. According to IDOT, about $37 million of the federal earmarks has been spent for land acquisition and engineering as of April of this year. According to a May 20, 2009, Daily Herald story: "The state's plan did not identify money for two significant suburban projects - extending Route 53 north of Lake Cook Road and the Prairie Parkway, which would stretch from I-88 to I-80 in Kane, Kendall and Grundy counties. "Concerning the Prairie Parkway, [IDOT Secretary Gary] Hannig noted that "it is a growing area and there's a lot of congestion. There needs to be some solution to the problem." "But because of litigation and lack of a local consensus, IDOT is holding back on funding." The Highway Improvement Program, updated each year, is the budget blueprint for highway projects in the next six years. The 2010-2015 Highway Improvement Program, announced May 20, includes just $2.4 million for preliminary engineering and land acquisition for the Prairie Parkway in Fiscal Year 2010 which begins July 1, 2009. All construction funding has been omitted. The previous year's highway improvement program included $207.5 million for the Prairie Parkway -- $16 million for land acquisition in FY 2009 and the rest for engineering and construction in the future. After the Illinois General Assembly approved a new $31 billion capital projects program, in August IDOT added $45 million in the Highway Improvement Program to add lanes to Illinois 47 for three miles from Illinois 71 to US 34 in Yorkville.
Friends of the Fox River and Citizens Against the Sprawlway filed a lawsuit on March 25, 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago against the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for violating Federal law in how it approved the Prairie Parkway project.
In December 2005, just five months after he secured $207 million in federal funds for the Prairie Parkway, House Speaker Dennis Hastert sold 138 acres of land near the highway route, netting him a $2 million profit on land held for three years or less. See additional details in Prairie Parkway News Coverage and in a Report prepared by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington DC based Congressional watchdog organization.
Another watchdog group on 2006 called for a Department of Justice investigation of Hastert's land dealings and highway "earmarks." See the details at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington website.
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