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News
Shift funding from Prairie Parkway to Rt. 47? : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisShift funding from Prairie Parkway to Rt. 47?
| Congressman Foster confirms effort to change federal legislation
| by Tony Scott
| 10/8/2009
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U.S. Rep. Bill Foster acknowledged this week that he wants to move funds from the Prairie Parkway expressway project to be used for improvements on Route 47 through Kendall County.
The Parkway is a planned expressway to link Interstate 80 near Minooka with Interstate 88 in Kane County, and its route would wind through southeastern, central and northwestern portions of Kendall County, between Yorkville and Plano.
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Plano who previously represented Foster's district, placed $207 million in the 2005 federal transportation bill signed by then-President George W. Bush at the Caterpillar plant in Oswego Township. The state would have needed to kick in matching funding of about $41 million to receive the federal funds, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
However, Foster, D-Geneva, said last Friday that the project is not popular with his constituents and that he wants the money moved to the improvements on Route 47 and possibly U.S. Route 34.
"I've listened to people up and down the area, and I think it's fair to say that a great majority of them just don't think it is the thing we should be spending money on right now," he said. "I think there may be a need for a high-radius ring road around Chicago. But I think that the Prairie Parkway was only a small part of a coherent plan for a high-radius ring road and strikes a lot of people the wrong way to do the planning."
He continued, "Our office is doing what we can to take the money in the federal earmark and try to get it applied to improvements to Route 47, which is, I think, what people are most enthusiastic about, as a short-term funding priority."
Foster said he was unsure about a timetable as to when the funding would be moved.
"It takes a very long time to change that," he said. "I'm not even in a position in which I can even predict the time-scale in which we will succeed or fail."
Should the money be shifted, Foster said he wants to ensure that it doesn't "escape from the area" and is used in projects downstate or in the City of Chicago.
"We're also concerned and being careful that the money should not escape from the area, so if it moves from the Prairie Parkway corridor to Route 47, we don't want the money to escape to downtown or downstate," he said. "My fear would be that it gets lost in Springfield. That would be my biggest worry."
Foster said a portion of the funding could also be used for improvements on Route 34.
"The Prairie Parkway money is in two separate sections," he said. "There is an earmark that is the Route 34 exchange (along the Parkway route). And that is something where we may be able to use the existing earmark language and simply apply it to Route 34, which I think would be fine with everyone."
Foster cautioned, however, that any changes made to the federal funding legislation would be difficult to make.
"The money that was used to start procurement for construction of the Prairie Parkway, that money will require a wording change," he said. "Which is a difficult thing to do quickly. And sometimes at all."
'Low priority project'
Rick Powell, an IDOT engineer overseeing the project, said this week that it appears the Parkway is not a "high priority project" for the state.
The state agency's five-year Proposed Highway Improvement Program previously included $182.4 million for funding the project.
In IDOT's current 2010-2015 program, Powell said, "We cut (the funding) way, way back to just doing minimal engineering and land acquisition work."
"It's obviously gone from being a high priority project to a low priority project," he said. "Gov. Quinn's main objectives right now are the capital program, high speed rail, and diversity in the workplace at IDOT."
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