The Illinois Department of Transportation is holding a public meeting later this month to discuss options for the replacement of the Joe Page Bridge over the Illinois River.
The bridge, which takes travelers of Illinois Route 100 and Illinois Route 16 from Calhoun to Greene County, was built in 1931 by the Illinois Steel Bridge Company of Jacksonville. The bridge’s last major rehabilitation was in 2004.
The closest crossings are ferries at Kampsville 10 miles upstream and at Brussels 17 miles downstream. It’s particularly of important use to farmers during planting and harvest.
IDOT District 8 Location Studies Unit Head Cindy Stafford says they’ll be both giving information about a couple of proposed routes for a new bridges and be looking for feedback from the public: “We are about midway through a preliminary engineering and environmental study for replacement of the bridge. What we are hoping to get out of this meeting is input from the public on some preliminary corridors that we have identified for potential locations to replace the bridge. They are very wide, fat corridors that are just sort of our starting points for looking at feasible locations for constructing a new bridge.”
Stafford says the new proposed bridge will be built along a new alignment of the highway. She says that the study is a starting point will look at the viability of the options: “We want to build something on new alignments so that we can keep traffic on the existing bridge while we build a new bridge. So, there is options where we could look at either north or south of the existing bridge or locations further upstream or downstream. We don’t know what is best in terms of crossing the [Illinois] River at this point, and impacts to potential environmental resources or property impacts. These are just sort of our starting points, and that’s what we want the public to come and look at those [options] and let us know if they have any ideas, as well, that we may not have considered. These are just our starting points for what is feasible. Some may fall out through our additional investigations because they don’t address the problem statement that we have, or they have such significant impacts, or they aren’t even permissible in terms of the Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard permits. We will find all of that out further on in the study.”
The meeting is planned from 5 to 8 p.m. for Thursday, March 21 at Calhoun High School, located at 102 Calhoun Avenue, just off of Illinois Route 100 in Hardin.
Handouts and display boards will be available for review, as well as information regarding engineering, land acquisition and environmental issues. Representatives from the state transportation department and project consultant Hanson Professional Services will be available to discuss the project and answer questions. There will not be a formal presentation.
A comment form will be provided at the meeting and also on the project website at joepagebridge.com.