Highway to Scott Air Force Base to be just two lanes with no room to grow
Frank Scott Parkway is a well-traveled convenience and an economic boon to the region, so it’s good news that it is finally getting widened to four lanes between Illinois 159 and North Green Mount Road.
You could argue that the whole thing should have been four lanes from the time it opened 16 years ago.
St. Clair County Engineer Jim Fields said some folks back then didn’t even think the parkway should be built.
But now that it is, and we’re going back and widening for all the development and traffic it’s drawn, shouldn’t the newest 3-mile section being planned from Cross Street in Shiloh out to Illinois 158 be four lanes from the very beginning?
Nope. Traffic projections don’t support that, Fields said. And they are not buying enough right-of-way to eventually go to four lanes. No money for that.
Fields said developers will be responsible for turn lanes and other road improvements that their projects require.
Well, here they come already. A $35-million luxury apartment complex is planning to build in Shiloh along the two-lane road that doesn’t yet exist.
What are the chances of major development coming to a major artery next to a growing hospital, through Shiloh and out to our largest employer — Scott Air Force Base — next to an Interstate 64 interchange? What traffic planner cannot see the new road being used by a good portion of the 6,250 military personnel who live off base, the 5,000 civilian employees and the 18,000 retirees using the commissary?
So the new section will be nickel and dimed today so we can spend big on bits and pieces in the future to get it to what it should have been all along. It will be deja vu all over again — years of too much traffic on too narrow of a road followed by years of construction to widen the intersections and then the road itself.
Maybe you should ask your county leaders why we don’t have the money to properly build a four-lane Frank Scott Parkway out to the military base to which its name refers. Could it have anything to do with the base’s neighbor? You know, the facility that is not a source of traffic congestion?
This story was originally published April 16, 2017 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Highway to Scott Air Force Base to be just two lanes with no room to grow."