Village Officials: County is Manipulating Numbers for Proposed CFI

Village officials are accusing the county of manipulating traffic numbers to make a case for an intersection design at Randall and Algonquin Roads that they say would divert traffic away from its retail district.

In a power-point presentation at Tuesday’s Committee-of-the-Whole meeting, Village Administrator Gerald Sagona said average travel times used by the county – as quoted in a recent Daily Herald article – showed that if the county did nothing to the intersection it would be better than if it made the conventional improvements that village officials want.

Numbers from a recent Daily Herald article reported the average travel speed for vehicles traveling through the intersection as 15 miles per hour. Travel speed would drop to just 9 miles per hour if conventional improvements were made. And the average speed would climb to 36 miles per hour if a CFI were built there.

After reading this, Fred Mullard, director of public works, said he found the numbers to be suspicious. 

Village officials said 28 percent of the storefront businesses in the village are located at the intersection. About 107 businesses generate about $2.6 million, or about 76 percent of the village’s sales tax revenue.

Trustees said the future of village is in jeopardy.

Paula Yensen, the sole member of the McHenry County Board that attended Tuesday's meeting, fielded questions from Lake in the Hills trustees.

“We need a trusting relationship,” Yensen told trustees.  “If data has been manipulated, if in fact that occurred, we take that very seriously. We will review your comments. We want to have a good relationship.

“… We can get to the bottom of this,” added Yensen, a former Lake in the Hills trustee. “I live here. I really care.”

Yensen added a decision on the type of intersection that would be built had not yet been made.

But village officials said they have a letter from Ken Koehler, chairman of McHenry County Board, saying the CFI intersection is a done deal.

Village President Ed Plaza described the CFI as a gee-whiz kind of concept that has become “a bug” with engineers in the county's transportation department.

What is a CFI? 

A continuous flow intersection has traffic turning left placed to the left of oncoming traffic, opposite where it is normally. This removes the conflict between on-coming traffic and traffic turning left. Vehicles turning left access the lane a few hundred feet in front of the intersection.

Continuous Flow Intersections are a new style of intersection, developed in Mexico. In the U.S., CFIs have been implemented in Louisiana, Maryland, Utah, Missouri, and New York.

Source: McHenry County Department of Transportation