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SYCAMORE – Members of the community are invited to attend a public meeting to learn more about DeKalb County’s plans to potentially realign Plank Road to address safety and access of the high-trafficked roadway, county staff said.
The public information meeting regarding a Plank Road realignment study by the DeKalb County Highway Department will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday in the DeKalb County Legislative Center, 200 N. Main St.
The open house-formatted meeting will last for two hours and invites the public to give comments on what they’d like to have taken into account in the realignment study.
The county’s highway department is in the second year of on a multiyear effort to decide upon the future of Plank Road between Illinois State Route 23 and Lukens Road.
DeKalb County Engineer Nathan Schwartz said he found discussion regarding Plank Road as far back as the 1990s, when a realignment just at the Plank Road and Moose Range intersection was proposed.
“Since then there has been some different ideas, and it really came down to looking at safety concerns, capacity, access control, and not just control but safe access on and off of the highway for side roads and driveways, and looking at all those different things,” Schwartz said.
In January, some DeKalb County residents called on government officials to expedite a plan to rearrange the intersection of Plank and Lindgren roads in Sycamore – part of ongoing concerns some expressed about Plank Road’s history of crashes.Major corridor Peace Road which runs north through DeKalb and Sycamore turns into Plank Road once drivers head east past Illinois Route 23 and into Kane County.
Schwartz said the county’s Highway Department thought it was a good idea follow the federal process to conduct a formal study regarding potential realignments of Plank Road from Route 23 to Lukens Road because the department knows that any future work is going to require federal money.
“Lets just start that process now because we know that the state and the feds – the federal highway administration – will be asking us these questions later, so we’re going through that process now,” Schwartz said.
Individuals looking to learn more about the study ahead of the May 18 meeting can watch a video created by the highway department to educate the public on the realignment study. That video will also play in two Dekalb County Legislative Center rooms throughout the two hour public meeting.