The McLean County Regional Planning Commission says the design of Veterans Parkway is outdated, and the commission is studying how it might be different.
The parkway cuts off access by modes other than motor vehicles. “It is not safe,” said commission transportation planner Jennifer Sicks.
Over the past decade, Veterans Parkway has been the site of more than 75 serious crashes, resulting in life-altering injuries or fatalities, said the commission.
“Part of what drove this in the first place — that got local governments and us together to pursue this study and the funding for it — was repeated incidents that people had witnessed of pedestrians crossing, not at a crosswalk, in other words, somewhere in the middle of a long stretch where there was no pedestrian provision, and some of the people who've done that in the last few years have died as a result. So this is really about safety, fundamentally,” said Sicks.
She said several locations along the road, particularly in the central section, have much higher crash rates of all degrees than anywhere else in the Twin Cities. It also has the highest rate per 100,000 crashes, producing either fatalities or serious, potentially life-altering injuries.
“This is the category that IDOT [Illinois Department of Transportation] looks at to say we have a serious problem here,” said Sicks.
She said it appears from an early look at traffic on what has become a major urban artery that most vehicles no longer drive end to end on Veterans. People use it for shorter hops, or to get to another place in town. It also has limitations for that purpose.
The road lacks the "complete streets" infrastructure needed "to protect today’s multi-modal users of this critical corridor and commercial area,” said a planning commission news release.
Sicks said the design of Veterans Parkway is still what it was in the 1940s.
"Part of the problem is that because this road was initially designed to function as a bypass, that thought never really left anyone's minds when they were doing redesigns over the years," said Sicks.
Yet until now, the answer to increasing levels of traffic has been to add more lanes.
"Part of what that cuts out is a place to put a mid-street refuge for pedestrians," said Sicks. "So, for a lot of people there might be a crossing, but they don't feel confident or safe about where it will leave them in the middle of the road."
Perhaps bike lanes adjacent to the road could feature in a re-design.
Sicks said perhaps even more important for a new vision of Veterans Parkway is manageable access for transit.
"Currently, although Connect Transit has a route or two that uses a small stretch of Veterans, they can't stop there. There's no place to put a bus stop. There's no way to get people to a bus stop. Much of that corridor has no sidewalks," said Sicks.
Seeking the public's input
The commission wants public input on the study through an online survey.
“What we need right now is their experiences on Veterans Parkway, what they run into, what they think works well, what they think is problematic and or dangerous … We would be interested in hearing not just from people who use it every day, but also how people feel about it who occasionally use it and then they figure out that those turn lanes don't work the way they thought, that kind of thing. So that we have a sense of where there's confusion,” said Sicks.
Part of what the commission is studying is demand and capacity. Despite some perceptions of congestion, Sicks said that is not a systemic issue.
“It isn't as far as we can tell. And there's some preliminary work being done that suggests that even at our relatively short rush-hour periods, it's fully within its capacity, and it's not really a problem,” said Sicks, adding if people hit the timing on stoplights right, they can go end to end in about 12 minutes.
“The intersection at Veterans Parkway and Route 9, Empire Street, has been reconfigured multiple times in the last four years or so, and it's still not where they want it to be, or where the drivers want it to be. It's very confusing. The way those extra lanes to sort of access across it have been designed,” said Sicks.
IDOT began a study several years ago, she said, to look at the intersection and has not reached a conclusion — though seven alternatives have emerged, including doing nothing.
“That was not an 'idle curiosity' kind of study. It was a 'how do we fix this' kind of study. We're looking at the results from that in the process of this study, because obviously we're looking at the whole road, and that would be an important element of making changes,” said Sicks.
She said the IDOT study looked for ways to better accommodate pedestrians, though the difficulty in just the one intersection illustrates the challenge for the entire parkway.
“I kept thinking that looks almost like more work than trying to get across without getting creamed. So, it's not clear what those solutions might look like,” said Sicks.
State Farm and Corporate South
The economy also is a factor in a potential re-design of the road. The entire stretch is an economic and social engine for the community, she said.
“If you want to buy a car in Bloomington-Normal, at some point you're going to be on Veterans Parkway, looking for the next car dealer. That's the kind of thing that concentrates there," said Sicks. "Obviously, there's a hospital, there's State Farm. There's whatever happens to corporate south at State Farm, a lot of things that people might need to get to which would be difficult [in] anything but a car."
She said it is unclear what will happen with State Farm's corporate south complex.
“We are told by various sources that they will be vacating at some point. As I understand it, there are currently only one or two buildings that are active there out of the couple of dozen,” said Sicks, noting if thousands of workers no longer go in and out of that site, it has implications for any road re-design.
“As we often find necessary, we have migrated some of our business areas between our various facilities in Bloomington. This will continue to take place over time. Our footprint in Bloomington is strong. Corporate South remains in our portfolio, and there are no decisions, or announcements planned around the facility,” said a State Farm spokesperson.
Potential redevelopment of Eastland Mall, if that happens, also would affect any new road plan.
“That's part of the analysis that's happening in the process of this study, to look at some of those potential alternatives and what kind of demand it would create that differs from the current mostly commercial pattern with some corporate residents along the way,” said Sicks.
“And the answer is, we don't know yet, but there are a range of possibilities that we know from essentially current examples out in the world, and we would look at that and see how those variations might happen.”
She pointed out different stretches of the road could have different features based on specific multi-modal needs.
The study will be done in 2026. The commission will give it to IDOT that maintains the road, and has its own priorities that include statewide factors.
“If we were talking about construction, right off the bat, it could take a while because it's incredibly expensive,” said Sicks. “I think what we hope the study will tell us at the end is here's a list of things that would improve these concerns, and here's our rough idea of how much it would cost.”
