St. Charles VS. Geneva (Elgin, Kane: costs, car, area)

[Drover]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The traffic lights in Kane Co are mostly the decent ones with sensors and plenty of left turn cycle, so they DO a good job of NOT allowing the intersections to get all grid locked like the old fashion crappy lights in Chicago BUT there are still LOTS of light along Randall and LOT & LOTS of places to shop which means lots of cars entering / leaving the roadway. All things considered the stretch is not as bad good be, but 15 minutes is assuming near perfect conditions.

If there were more north-south option the traffic would not be as concentrated.

I gotta tell you, after visiting relatives in Carmel Indiana, I've become a big fan of roundabouts. Randall Road could stand a few.

I fondly remember when Randall Road was the border between the suburbs and Iowa and you actually could fly by all the "congestion" of the Tri-Cities area by using Randall. Of course, "congestion" wasn't quite as bad back then, but Randall was still super-convenient. Alas, times change...

[chet everett]

Yep round-a-bouts / traffic circles are ingenious ways of keeping traffic moving instead idling and accelerating. Studies have shown that they generally result in no increase in accidents, help to control speeds and are maintenance neutral. The intelligence / comfort level of drivers may be a factor that prevents their widespread adoption, and too many public works guys do not understand how they can keep 'em plowed in winter, and some merchants /developers REALLY despise them (tends to reduce the desirability of corners and cut into the parkway buffer...) so I doubt Kane Co will be eager to try them on a scale that would impact Randall Rd, but it would a great experiment...

[Steve-o]

Originally Posted by Drover

Look, I'm not going to sit here and argue the fine points of traffic congestion on Randall Road with you.

I was being kind and civil, just pointing out some observations Ive made in my travels up and down Randall for the past several dozen years, thats all.

Frick.

[SubaruFiend]

All I have to say (regarding randall road) when the damn speed limit sign says 40, that does NOT mean go 35. And when it says 50 it does NOT mean 40!!!!!!!

I can't believe how incredibly SLOWWWW people drive on Randall Rd. I try to avoid it as MUCH as possible.

ALSO: THE LEFT LANE IS MEANT FOR PASSING!!!!!!!! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!

.....end rant

[quickdraw]

Originally Posted by Drover

I fondly remember when Randall Road was the border between the suburbs and Iowa and you actually could fly by all the "congestion" of the Tri-Cities area by using Randall. Of course, "congestion" wasn't quite as bad back then, but Randall was still super-convenient. Alas, times change...

I moved to Geneva in May of 1994. During the weekend we moved in, a Venture store opened on Randall Rd. Little did I know that was the beginning of the end. That was the first store that opened on Randall Rd between Geneva and the hardware store in Batavia. Before that Geneva was really strict on what could be built on Randall rd. I think there was a newspaper office and dentist place that Geneva forced to build expensive
brick buildings. Then all hell broke lose and it was never the same. One thing that bugged me was that Geneva allowed every store to put one or two signs high in the sky. When you drive through a lot of nice towns
like geneva, the store signs are small and low to the ground. Geneva was a really special town and the politicians let it go.

Also as a result of Randall Rd, downtown Geneva and St. Charles are complete gridlock and noise (38 and 64). Cars and especially trucks delivering to the stores make for slow travel times. It's a real shame that the main downtown streets weren't a block off the busy highways, because both downtowns are so beautiful. There aren't many downtowns like them anymore.

BTW, has anyone noticed that the street in downtown St. Charles makes a very loud whistling noise. I went back for a visit recently. While standing
on the main streets in both towns, I was bummed out about how damn noisy the traffic was. St. Charles was worse because of the whistling and I noticed it may have been due to ridges(purposely put there) in the pavement.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by quickdraw

I moved to Geneva in May of 1994. During the weekend we moved in, a Venture store opened on Randall Rd. Little did I know that was the beginning of the end. That was the first store that opened on Randall Rd between Geneva and the hardware store in Batavia. Before that Geneva was really strict on what could be built on Randall rd. I think there was a newspaper office and dentist place that Geneva forced to build expensive
brick buildings. Then all hell broke lose and it was never the same. One thing that bugged me was that Geneva allowed every store to put one or two signs high in the sky. When you drive through a lot of nice towns
like geneva, the store signs are small and low to the ground. Geneva was a really special town and the politicians let it go.

Also as a result of Randall Rd, downtown Geneva and St. Charles are complete gridlock and noise (38 and 64). Cars and especially trucks delivering to the stores make for slow travel times. It's a real shame that the main downtown streets weren't a block off the busy highways, because both downtowns are so beautiful. There aren't many downtowns like them anymore.

BTW, has anyone noticed that the street in downtown St. Charles makes a very loud whistling noise. I went back for a visit recently. While standing
on the main streets in both towns, I was bummed out about how damn noisy the traffic was. St. Charles was worse because of the whistling and I noticed it may have been due to ridges(purposely put there) in the pavement.

My family has been in the Fox Valley area since 1980. And believe me, congestion on 38 and 64 was already a problem when you arrived in 1994. When you got there, the Prairie Street bridge in St. Charles was brand-new, built as a means to relieve pressure on the Main Street and Illinois Street bridges. It didn't accomplish much (and still doesn't) because they created a T intersection on the east end of the bridge (Adams Avenue used to T-intersect Riverside Drive before they built the bridge). The original plan was to connect Prairie to Adams Avenue and then connect Adams to Tyler. Residents along Adams balked, so they dropped the plan to connect Adams to Tyler. Residents still balked, so they cut off Adams from the bridge so people wouldn't use Adams as a thoroughfare to get from the bridge from 5th and 7th Avenues.


Proposals for a "regional" bridge over the river have been kicked around since the 1980s, with particular focus looking at connecting Army Trail Road on the east side of the river with Red Fern on the west side, and/or connecting Division Street on the east side to Gray Street on the west side. This was driven by growing residential development on the west side of the river, particularly north of STC but also west of Randall.

All the commercial development you see along Randall sprung up in response to residential development on the west side that was already well underway and already making a mess out of cross-town traffic, a situation exacerbated by the limited number of routes across the river.

[SubaruFiend]

They seriously need to build a couple more bridges in between stc and geneva AND in between stc and elgin (whatever happened to the plans to build that bridge where Red Gate road is??)

[Steve-o]

Originally Posted by SubaruFiend

They seriously need to build a couple more bridges in between stc and geneva AND in between stc and elgin (whatever happened to the plans to build that bridge where Red Gate road is??)

I believe that road had to run through Wayne and you can imagine what the residents of that, ahem, nice little village thought of that proposal.

[gardener34]

They ran out of $$. It is full speed ahead for the stearns bridge though. I am wondering what that is going to do to traffic on route 25 though... - that all remains to be seen. They do need a better way for all that traffic to get to all those developments they built along randall rd. in elgin and southelgin though. (and farther west!)

[Drover]

Is it even going to intersect with 25 or just fly over it? What will it connect to at the other end? Will it just "T" with Route 31 on the other side?

And are they finally going to fix that asinine "Y" intersection at Dunham and 25?