Brookfield is moving steadily ahead on its project to renovate Ogden Avenue from Eberly Avenue to Custer Avenue.
At the village board’s June 10 committee of the whole meeting, trustees heard an hourlong update from Jim Tibble, a senior project manager at Civiltech Engineering, the firm that the village chose to lead the project in November 2022. He walked the board through Civiltech’s plan for the project, which is currently in the design phase and will see Ogden Avenue resurfaced, its sidewalks reconstructed to be more accessible, its aging utilities replaced and its traffic signals modernized.
Tibble also requested direction from the board on a number of specific items, as Civiltech will need to get the overall plan approved by the Illinois Department of Transportation before the project progresses beyond the design phase.
Tibble said that phase should last another 15-18 months, meaning it will be done between September and December 2025. Once the design is finalized, the project will move into its second phase, focused on securing a construction contract; the village has secured funding for this phase in 2027 from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. The third and final phase, construction, will begin in 2029 “in the best-case scenario,” Tibble said.
Parking
To collect data on the average number of cars parking on each side street — specifically, between Ogden Avenue and the first alleyway north or south — Tibble said Civiltech flew a drone over the throughway on an hourly basis. The data collected, alongside feedback from residents, told Civiltech that there isn’t enough parking near Ogden Avenue, he said.
He presented trustees with two options for the design of those parking spaces: angled parking or parallel parking. While angled parking would allow more cars to park along a given street, it would reduce the amount of streetside green space. Parallel parking would have the opposite effect, providing more space for greenery while reducing the number of cars that can park.
Tibble gave his own recommendation to use angled parking where possible and only use parallel parking as a backup, including on side streets that connect to intersections with traffic signals. After discussion, the board agreed with this suggestion.
The other item he sought direction on was how far back from crosswalks the side street parking should start. In Brookfield, the design standard has been 20 feet, meaning the first street parking space is 20 feet north or south from the edge of the crosswalk; however, IDOT’s standard would place these spaces 30 feet away, meaning any variance from this standard would require specific approval.
Trustee Jennifer Hendricks pointed out that the extra distance might make Ogden Avenue more accessible for pedestrians crossing the street.
“We are taking additional steps to try to make it more pedestrian-friendly,” Tibble said. “Widening the sidewalks where we can, obviously improving the ADA ramps at each intersection [and] identifying improvements with [curb] bump-outs on some of those side streets as well.”
The board agreed that Civiltech should seek IDOT approval for the variances to allow only 20 feet between the crosswalk and parking spaces; once trustees know if the variances are approved or rejected, they will decide the distance on a case-by-case basis for each side street based on how much parking is needed and other factors.
“I think that makes sense to have that option to go the variance, and you can always not do it, but you can’t go back and ask for it later,” Trustee Katie Kaluzny said.
Redoing intersections
Another part of the project involves widening the intersections between smaller side streets and Ogden Avenue to better account for the kinds of vehicles that turn onto the street and may have to encroach onto oncoming traffic.
“As you’re going from a smaller street to a larger street, the size of truck or car that you’re designing for varies,” Tibble said. “For some of the smaller local streets, [the upper limit is] a school bus; for some of the larger arterials, it’s semis, and depending on the length of the semi as well.”
In order to accommodate turning trucks at major intersections like Maple Avenue and Ogden Avenue, Tibble said the changes may be incompatible with elements of Brookfield’s active transportation plan, which recommends adding curb bump-outs.
Because Brookfield, generally speaking, only owns the roads as they are now and does not own some of the land where it is recommended to widen the street, Tibble said Civiltech would need to coordinate with other municipalities, like La Grange and Lyons, and look into right-of-way acquisition for private property.
Each of the six intersections included in Tibble’s presentation is a unique case, some of which include private property and signage right up to the roadway, so he did not go into detail about each of them.
The board told Tibble to have Civiltech approach IDOT with their plan for the intersections, including any necessary variances, and that trustees would look at each intersection afterward and make decisions on how to progress within IDOT’s approved plans.
Left-turn lanes
There are no left-turn lanes at the intersections of Ogden Avenue with DuBois Avenue and Custer Avenue, even though both have traffic signals, Tibble said. The other three intersections at Ogden Avenue with traffic signals do have left-turn lanes.
IDOT’s criteria for adding left-turn lanes includes that there are, on average, 75 left turns per hour at an intersection. Tibble said there were only 15 per hour at DuBois Avenue while there were 55 per hour at Custer Avenue. IDOT also looks at the number of left-turn related crashes over the previous five years, which was only three at DuBois and two at Custer, he said.
Tibble said there would be “no operational benefit” to adding a left-turn lane at either intersection, so Brookfield’s village board agreed to have Civiltech maintain each intersection’s current configuration.
Pedestrian crossing
Tibble said Civiltech is looking at north-south crosswalks at Raymond Avenue and Oak Avenue to improve pedestrian safety. At Raymond Avenue, there is an uncontrolled crosswalk, while Oak Avenue is the midpoint of a nearly 2,000-foot crosswalk desert.
He told the board there are two options for these crosswalks. Civiltech could look to widen the roadway on Ogden Avenue and what are called “pedestrian refuge islands” — small, paved areas in the middle of the street where pedestrians can break their crossing into two parts. Otherwise, they could add signage and lights at these crosswalks so it’s clear to drivers that a pedestrian is crossing.
If the board opts for the implement pedestrian refuge islands, Tibble said they would each require “a site-specific design” due to the large volume of traffic that passes through Ogden Avenue.
“There’s nothing standard that can be implemented,” he said.
One issue with the islands is that they would require narrowing the sidewalks and parkways along their stretches of Ogden Avenue to accommodate the widened roadway, which might make those areas worse for pedestrians in some ways.
“Right now, we have approximately a 10-foot parkway. It’s not a 10-foot sidewalk, but when you’re walking on the walk, you could be up to 10 feet away from the cars,” Village Engineer Derek Treichel said. “This is proposing just a seven-foot walk, so the traffic’s going to feel like it’s on top of you a little more than it currently does.”
After over 20 minutes of discussion, the village board directed Tibble to approach IDOT with plans to add pedestrian refuge islands at both Raymond Avenue and Oak Avenue; similar to the other items, trustees agreed to make their own final call on the matter after seeing what IDOT would approve.
Correction, June 21, 2024, 3:10 p.m.: An earlier version of this article misnamed the street marking the western bound of the improvements in Brookfield. That street is Eberly Avenue, not East Avenue, as it is named in La Grange. We apologize for the error.
