Officials demand change at dangerous County Line Road and Rt. 1 intersection 

Lawmakers, public safety officials, and local government representatives want immediate improvements at Rt. 1/Dixie Highway and County Line Road to try and reduce the severity and frequency of crashes there while IDOT completes work toward its planned permanent change.

The problematic intersection is regularly the site of serious wrecks and, just last month, a fiery crash claimed the life of a Joliet man. 

There is a stop sign on each side of County Line Road, while traffic on Dixie Highway has no limitations. The speed limit is 55, though its rural location makes it ripe for speeders, and heavy truck traffic means accidents are often severe.

After the last fatal accident, Beecher Fire Chief Joe Falaschetti and other local leaders say they need to see change — and fast. 

“I don’t want another fatal accident there. Let’s avoid it and get to some short-term solution,” Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey said.

A meeting held on March 9, hosted by the Beecher Fire Protection District, brought together approximately 20 local leaders and elected officials – all seeking immediate improvements from IDOT, including but not limited to a flashing light, rumble strips, and a four-way stop – to help slow traffic and prevent serious accidents. 

Currently, IDOT is in Phase 2 of an engineering study at the intersection. The study determined that converting the intersection to a roundabout would be the best choice, IDOT District 1 Bureau Chief of Programming Steven Schilke said. 

Schilke said roundabouts are proven to reduce speed and significantly reduce severe accidents.

However, they’ve only just begun Phase 2, which means Phase 3 construction wouldn’t start until 2028 at the earliest. Phase 2 is right-of-way configuration and land acquisition — what Schilke says is a controlling factor in how long it could take to implement a change. 

“We can’t wait,” state Rep. Jackie Haas said, pushing for an interim solution.

During Schilke’s presentation, he cited data showing only two fatal accidents over the past five years, which elicited audible shock from the attendees.

“We’ve got people in the room shaking their heads. It seems like that data is incorrect,” state Rep. Thaddeus Jones said. 

IDOT’s decisions and actions are based entirely on data, specifically crash data and traffic counts, but local officials say they’re not getting the full picture due to the mixed jurisdiction at the intersection.

The intersection is under Will County’s purview to the north of County Line Road on Dixie Highway and Kankakee County to the south. The state is responsible for Dixie Highway. 

“It’s rare to respond to a property damage-only accident where people walk away. These are big accidents — we don’t get fender benders there. We need to do something,” Grant Park Police Chief Carl Frey said.

Downey said Kankakee County was willing to install rumble strips but ran into issues with the Will County Department of Transportation, which denied the request.

“We can’t sit and wait for two years for a study, or another study, or another study. We’re telling people, well, there’s a study going on. Families who suffer a life-altering situation like that don’t want to hear about a study,” Downey said. 

For Rep. Jones, it’s a personal mission to create safer intersections after being involved in a serious accident himself. 

Before the meeting concluded, Jones said he had made contact with Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, who pledged rumble strips — a step in the right direction, though ultimately not the fix the group was seeking.

IDOT’s Lisa Heaven-Baum said IDOT has been working on getting updated crash data reports in its system, but acknowledged there was a backlog from Illinois State Police. 

Will County Coroner Laurie Summers and Kankakee County Coroner Robert Gessner each said they’ve had to make death notifications, and who gets called depends on where the decedent ultimately landed in the accident, as the intersection is literally at the county line.

Falaschetti added when someone calls 911, their cell phone ping could route to either Kan-Comm Dispatch or Will County’s Laraway Communications, just depending on where they are in the intersection. Although it’s a mutual auto-aid area, the commanding department would retain the data.

Further complicating datasets is fatalities resulting from an accident but that don’t occur at the scene (meaning someone dies en route to the hospital or at the hospital), do not get included in IDOT’s crash statistics, Summers said. 

Fatalities from accidents at County Line Road and Dixie Highway could be counted in Cook County or, in the case of individuals transported to hospitals in Indiana, local officials won’t get the data at all. 

Haas also questioned whether a roundabout was the right solution, noting people get confused by them, but Schilke said the data didn’t support a traffic light at the intersection. 

The group pressed for a four-way stop now to slow people down and save lives.

Heaven-Baum said they have to study whether adding stop signs could create another hazardous condition, with traffic backing up on Dixie Highway.

Falaschetti responded that traffic already routinely is backed up for at least an hour or more whenever there’s an accident. The last fatal accident closed the road for six hours.

IDOT has to follow the Federal Highway Administration’s Uniform Manual on Traffic Control Devices, so interim measures still would require those additional studies and, ultimately, the Will County Department of Transportation would be responsible for implementing any interim changes, Heaven-Baum said.

“Is there opposition from IDOT to putting a stop sign there? Because what I keep hearing from everybody is that we want something done that would help immediately, to make sure we don’t have these catastrophic accidents anymore,” state Rep. Elgie Sims Jr. asked. 

“It’s not that there’s an opposition. There’s a process we have to follow,” IDOT’s Jose Rios said.

Officials questioned whether costs were the real culprit behind the slow process, citing how quickly stop signs were erected on Rt. 50.

“I grew up in Beecher. I got a post hole digger at home, I’ll do the work,” Summers said, underscoring the desperation to get change at the intersection.

Beecher Trustee Joe Tieri said he gets stopped all the time by residents asking why Rt. 50’s problematic intersection was fixed so quickly, while their intersection is neglected.

“I’ll help the coroner dig the hole. I’ll buy the stop sign. At least people can see we’re trying,” Tieri said.

IDOT said they won’t have to go through the letting process, and this is as fast as they can move. Schilke said Rt. 50’s intersection was also further along in its study than this one. 

They will need 30 days to update the traffic study, after which they’ll know whether the data tells them it’s safe enough to install a four-way stop, Schilke said.

“This is us doing everything — we’ve expedited our consultant to do a count, so we’ve jumped ahead of other things in the workflow process. This is as quick as we can,” Heaven-Baum said.

Officials said it wasn’t good enough.

“When I hear more studies, I just hear more time,” Frey said.

Frey wasn’t alone; the sentiment in the room was that everyone was sick of hearing about studies. 

“Maybe some of the people who sit around a desk over there, you need to come out and see it,” Gessner said. 

“Shame on you for having another death out there when we’ve been trying to tell you there are problems out there and, oh, it’ll take two years. Unbelievable, two years,” Gessner said in disbelief after noting how quickly Rt. 50 was able to get stop signs installed.

Washington Township Clerk Joe Burgess asked if it was possible to get stop signs but, again, Rios referred back to needing data.

“If you ever have the chance to visit the intersection, one, I caution you — please visit at your own risk — but two, pay attention to the shoulders at that intersection because there’s very, very little visible gravel at the shoulders,” Falaschetti told IDOT.

“It’s basically mulched in car part debris, semi debris, ruts where you could see where every vehicle that has gone off the roadway from an accident to where they’ve ended up,” Falaschetti said.

“That should be a red flag in general,” Falaschetti added.

The group set a meeting for early April to reconvene and, hopefully, have an exact course of action laid out. In the meantime, they planned to compile their own data to more accurately reflect the conditions and submit it to IDOT. 

IDOT officials said they’re committed to making roads as safe as possible and will do everything to expedite the process.