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Aurora Beacon-News
February 14, 2002

Yorkville OKs study on future road needs

By Dave Parro
STAFF WRITER

YORKVILLE ó A citywide transportation study will identify a primary road network to accommodate growth within Yorkville's planned boundaries, including upgrades to current roads and construction of new ones.

The City Council unanimously approved the $19,000 contract with Smith Engineering Tuesday. The study will determine which existing and future roads will be needed to form a network that will serve the rapidly developing community.

Engineers will analyze the city's updated comprehensive plan to get an idea of where the road network will have to serve in the future. The updated plan identifies development areas north to Route 30, south to Caton Farm Road, west to Eldamain Road, and east to Grove Road.

Officials said it's crucial for the transportation study to consider the planned growth areas identified in the comprehensive plan.

"If your roads aren't going to support this, then you have to go back and redraw your plans," said Alderman Larry Kot.

City Administrator Tony Graff said Yorkville's transportation plan hasn't been updated since the mid-1990s, before the last comprehensive plan update in 1997.

Part of the transportation study will be paid for by developers, Graff said.

Smith engineers also will collect existing traffic counts, calculate traffic volumes for primary network roads based on future developments and projected by-pass traffic and prepare a cost estimate for construction of the road network.

With the city's boundaries set with nearly all of the surrounding towns, Mayor Art Prochaska said that identifying a transportation network will be a key to planning for controlled growth.

"This is one of the things that will go along with the comprehensive plan as we look at how we get people through the community," Prochaska said.

Traffic counts at Routes 34 and 47 have grown by about 200 percent in the past decade, even though the population has increased by 60 percent. Officials project Yorkville's population could more than quadruple, possibly to more than 30,000 people, in the next 10 years.