JOHNSBURG – The Johnsburg Road roundabout, the first in McHenry County, opened Friday afternoon, the village’s construction engineer said. The roundabout is the final part of a three-year construction project to alleviate traffic on Johnsburg Road by widening the road from Route 31 to St. Johns Avenue and Chapel Hill Road, building a continuous center left-turn lane, and installing traffic signals at the intersections with Riverside Drive and Spring Grove Road. The hills west of Riverside Drive also were lowered to improve visibility, and the sidewalks on both sides of Johnsburg Road will be finished. Decorative road lights, park benches and trash bins also will be added. There will still be a “tiny, tiny bit of work” to take care after the opening of the roundabout, HR Green construction engineer Mike Hastings said. Crews will be putting sand in the bricks that make up the decorative banding of the sidewalks. “It’s basically done,” he said. “Everything in the roundabout is done. There’s no construction crews in the visibility of drivers going around the roundabout.” A ribbon-cutting will be at 3 p.m. Sept. 6. The project, which was paid for primarily with grants as well as matching dollars from the village of Johnsburg and McHenry County, came in at or under budget, Hastings said.
Both parts of the project cost an estimated $7.6 million, $4.9 million for the first stage and $2.7 million for the second, according to McHenry County Division of Transportation Construction Manager James Werner Jr.
UPDATE: This article has been updated with complete cost estimates, which came in after the article was originally published.