336 Expressway/Bypass

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WIU0812
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So it has been announced that Governor Quinn will be in town today to give "a significant announcement" regarding the bypass. Let's hope it is actually significant and not so much just a quick announcement regarding how well it is going. This is definitely a large job creator in the area and keeps many laborers, operator, engineers and other construction related personnel in business and making money in the area. Here is to the next phase hopefully around the east side of the town coming soon and then it begins the long travel either east to Canton or South to Rushville.

http://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/article/2 ... /141019958
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ST_Lawson
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WIU0812 wrote:So it has been announced that Governor Quinn will be in town today to give "a significant announcement" regarding the bypass. Let's hope it is actually significant and not so much just a quick announcement regarding how well it is going. This is definitely a large job creator in the area and keeps many laborers, operator, engineers and other construction related personnel in business and making money in the area. Here is to the next phase hopefully around the east side of the town coming soon and then it begins the long travel either east to Canton or South to Rushville.

http://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/article/2 ... /141019958
I doubt the Governor would be in town just to talk about how the current project is going. With the upcoming election, he's going to want to maximize his time announcing big things whenever possible, especially downstate...so him actually showing up probably means something along the lines of releasing funding for one of these: East bypass, 4-lane connection East to Peoria, 4-lane connection South to Jacksonville. All three are projects that have been "studied". At this point, I think that US 67 4-lane down to Jacksonville (technically it's supposed to eventually be QC down to Alton) is the only one that's actually had work done on it, with it now being 4-lane from about 10 miles south of Jacksonville almost all the way up to the turn off for Bluffs (if you're not familiar with the area, that's a total of about 30 miles of 67...roughly).
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WIU0812
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Most likely it is the release of the rest of the funds for the west ring road as my understanding is that not all of the money had be released for the 4 lanes when they started work. It will either be that or the continuing of the ring road around Macomb from 67 to just east of Pella Windows where it goes south towards industry. Any way you look at it, it has to be good for the area.
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ST_Lawson
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WIU0812 wrote:Most likely it is the release of the rest of the funds for the west ring road as my understanding is that not all of the money had be released for the 4 lanes when they started work. It will either be that or the continuing of the ring road around Macomb from 67 to just east of Pella Windows where it goes south towards industry. Any way you look at it, it has to be good for the area.
Yup, you're right. It's another $35 million for the west bypass: http://www.wiu.edu/news/newsrelease.php ... e_id=12002
It says it's supposed to cover a 2-lane highway bypass around the west side of Macomb. I think that the grading and prep work that they did allows for an eventual 4-lane once they come up with the rest of the $ for it. But for now it'll be good to have that bypass so that we don't have so much heavy truck traffic right through town.
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WIU0812
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Still ridiculous that they will have all of the grading and earthwork prepared for 4 lanes and they are only going to pave two. I am not positive, but I feel like if they let the civil earthwork sit to long they will have to do erosion repairs before they can even complete the other 2 lanes in future.
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WIU0812 wrote:Still ridiculous that they will have all of the grading and earthwork prepared for 4 lanes and they are only going to pave two. I am not positive, but I feel like if they let the civil earthwork sit to long they will have to do erosion repairs before they can even complete the other 2 lanes in future.
Well, I'm not a civil engineer, so I'm no expert and I can only comment on what I can see from other roads that pass over/nearby the bypass area, so I don't know for sure that they've done both lanes worth. In most places it does look pretty wide to be just 2 lanes though. I'm hoping that it's just a matter of them getting the money for 2 lanes now, then by the time they're nearly done with that, they release the money for the second set of 2 lanes, bringing it up to the 4.
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