Category: Transportation

Save the Fen at Joliet Junior College: An Open Letter

This is an open letter I wrote recently to the leadership of Joliet Junior College in my hometown of Joliet, Illinois. The issue at hand is a future road extension, proposed by a mall developer, that would bisect the protected natural areas of the JJC Campus and compromise a rare type of Illinois wetland. The proposed roadway has galvanized support for the JJC Fen and associated natural areas on campus and in the Joliet community, as the College’s Board of Trustees debates how to proceed.

13 June 2017

Dear President Judy Mitchell and Board Chairman Bob Wunderlich –

I write to you today as a citizen of Joliet, a longtime environmental educator, and the son and grandson of JJC graduates. My overall message to you and your colleagues on the JJC Board of Trustees is simple: I strongly support the view of the JJC Natural Areas Committee and numerous faculty, students, alumni, and community members that the JJC Fen and associated open/natural areas must be protected from the proposed road extension by Cullinan Properties.

Since its settlement began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Illinois has lost over 90% of its natural wetlands to agricultural and urban development. In the meantime, it has built what must be millions of miles of roads, many of which are deteriorated and no longer in use. In short: we have enough roads. We cannot afford to lose yet more high quality wetlands.

Map of proposed development and roads. The County Road extension (vertical blue line at left) is the road that would traverse the JJC protected natural areas.
Map of proposed development and roads. The County Road extension (vertical blue line at left) is the road that would traverse the JJC protected natural areas.

As the above map illustrates, the proposed County Road Extension is neither the shortest nor the most convenient traffic route from the adjacent I-55 and I-80 interstates to Cullinan’s proposed “mixed-use lifestyle center” — yet even if it were, it would not be the best route. As the great writer, ecologist, and conservationist Aldo Leopold famously wrote in his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (pp. 224-5).

The importance of JJC’s high quality open spaces, biodiversity, water quality, landscape aesthetics, and overall campus sustainability far outweigh the supposed advantages of this road extension, which serves no other purpose than to direct traffic to a shopping center that could otherwise take several other perfectly viable alternative routes that are faster and more direct.

JJC Fen 2
Detailed map of the JJC campus buildings, open spaces, water bodies, and wetlands

As the College mulls over the tempting overtures of Cullinan Properties and decides whether to protect this ecologically and educationally valuable ecosystem, or to allow its fragmentation and ultimate degradation, I urge you and your colleagues to take a long view of the matter. A perspective informed by environmental sustainability inspires us to ask careful questions about the road, the character of the campus, and the institutional mission — questions that relate not just to the issues of the day, but those decades into the future.

We now live in a world of rapid urbanization, climate change, and accelerating species extinction. A century from now, I highly doubt that the leaders, faculty, students, and alumni of JJC will look favorably upon a decision in 2017 to disturb and degrade its coveted and protected natural areas with a road built exclusively to service a single shopping center. In fact, given the economic vagaries that occur over a mere 20-30 years, let alone a century, it’s questionable said development will even be operating that far into the future. (The example of the Jefferson Square Mall, built in 1975 with great fanfare and now vaporized from the landscape a mere 40 years later, comes to mind, though there are many others one could cite.)

However, I do think that the future stewards of America’s first and oldest community college (founded 1901) would be rightly proud in the year 2117 that its leaders in the present day chose to maintain the ecological and aesthetic integrity of the campus ecosystem by conserving its tranquil and species-rich open space, protecting the water quality of its beautiful lake and stream, and ensuring the opportunities of generations of students to study field-based biology and ecology in the extraordinary “living classroom” provided by one of Illinois’ most rare and endangered wetlands, a fen.

JJC biology prof Andy Neill leads students on an exploration of the campus natural areas, spring 2017 (photo: Eric Ginnard, Joliet Herald-News)
JJC biology prof Andy Neill leads students on an exploration of the campus natural areas, spring 2017 (photo: Eric Ginnard, Joliet Herald-News)

As a graduate of the local public schools (JT West class of 1985), a current resident of Joliet, and now a professor of sustainability studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago, I have developed a close relationship over the past 12 years with many students and faculty at JJC. I can attest from my vantage point in the regional higher ed community that JJC’s commitment to environmental sustainability – embodied in its native woodland, prairie, and wetland ecosystems; its 1998 Natural Areas Resolution; its LEED-Platinum greenhouse facility and widely-praised arboretum; its progressive academic programming; and its campus sustainability leadership – is the envy of many colleges and universities in the Chicagoland region.

Consequently, harming the fundamental character of the campus’ rare and biodiverse ecosystems would not just diminish the quality of the College’s outdoor learning laboratories; it would also directly contradict JJC’s professed commitment to sustainability and potentially erode its hard-won reputation among its institutional peers.

As a local citizen who cares deeply about and greatly appreciates JJC’s remarkable history and unique educational mission, I ask that you heed the recommendations of the Natural Areas Committee and protect said Natural Areas, including the fen, from any present or future road development.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Bryson
Resident of Joliet, IL
Professor & Director of Sustainability Studies, Roosevelt University

Two Canadian Filmmakers Drop by for an Interview

Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)
Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)

This past Sunday, Toronto-based independent filmmakers Geoff Norris and Kyle Lennan came by my house in Joliet to interview me about the long-simmering Peotone Airport controversy in agricultural lands south of Chicago in Will County, IL. Norris and Lennan have been making a film about the proposed Pickering Airport project in the rural areas near Toronto, which has resulted in the government seizure of property and demolition of homes over the past several decades despite no tangible progress on the airport’s construction.

The story bears an eerie resemblance to that playing out in eastern Will County within the vast stretches of prime Illinois farmland near the rural villages of Peotone, Monee, and Beecher. Geoff and Kyle came across my op-ed series about the Peotone airport written for the Joliet Herald-News up through 2012, and were kind enough to include me as a local voice from the community on their road trip to the Chicago area, where they also filmed local activists/opponents to the project.

Bike to Coffee Shop; Get to Work

This week I’m discussing transportation with my Roosevelt University students in my online SUST 210 Sustainable Future class. Today I used three modes of transportation by 8:30am here in my hometown of Joliet, IL.

First, I drove my daughter Esmé and her school chum Claudia to kindergarten at our neighborhood elementary school, which is 1.1 miles from our house. But because it wasn’t raining, we parked a few blocks away and walked up to the door, so we could get a little exercise and some fresh air. Amazingly, the girls skipped along the sidewalk, even though it was a cold and blustery Friday and they had to wear their winter coats. Kid energy at 7:45am — it’s truly impressive.

After walking back to my car, I considered my options: drive henceforth to my favorite coffee shop in downtown Joliet, about two miles east? Or zip home first and ride my bike? I chose the latter, because my 45-year-old body desperately needs exercise, any exercise, and it would take me only a couple more minutes to get to my destination. (I’m way too cheap to get a health club membership, so I get my sporadic workouts away way I can.)

JittersSo I pumped up the tires on my 1972 Schwinn Varsity and rode down the long hill to the Des Plaines River, crossed the Ruby Street bridge and waved to the I & M Canal as I did so, locked up my bike in front of Jitters, and fired up the laptop, a steaming mug of excellent java close at hand.

It is a particular privilege of an academic like myself to perform this series of tasks and call it “work.” Plus, I can take pleasure in supporting the local economy, and anticipate additional (free) exercise on my strenuous uphill ride back home later this morning.

On a related note, here’s an account of a much longer and circuitous bike ride I took to work here in Joliet from March 2012.

Junior’s Fall from Grace: More Bad News for Peotone

You’d think that Jessie Jackson Jr.’s stunning fall from political grace last week would have opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport in Peotone doing cartwheels of joy out in the cold autumnal winds of eastern Will County.

Jesse Jackson Jr., former US Rep (IL-2nd)

After all, the last significant public appearance by Jackson was way back on April 21st, when as a progressive-minded environmentalist he promoted Earth Day by sanctimoniously spading up soil in a Peotone-area cornfield while surrounded by media and bussed-in supporters from his 2nd Congressional District. His purported “people’s groundbreaking” was for what Jackson insisted on calling the Abraham Lincoln National Airport.

That grandiose name is telling, for it expresses Jr.’s once-vaulting political ambition even as it inappropriately cloaks a misguided boondoggle of an airport project in the image of one of America’s most revered presidents. It also signifies the longstanding logjam between Jackson’s Cook County-based Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission (ALNAC) and the various governmental bodies of Will County, which understandably want to retain control over the airport’s construction and administration.

That’s why the folks of S.T.A.N.D. (Shut This Airport Nightmare Down) and other grassroots opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport should mourn rather than celebrate Jackson’s departure and ALNAC’s inevitable dissolution. Without the gridlock-producing squabbles over the airport’s construction funding, name, or design that Jackson’s commission helped create, airport proponents now have before them a slightly less congested path toward the project’s FAA approval — which hinges upon, among many other things, a unified governing authority for the airport.

STAND members hold up a sign at Rob Ogalla’s farm near Peotone, April 2012
(M. Bryson)

Note that I said “slightly.” That’s because building a functional political alliance in Illinois these days is about as likely as finding a Republican candidate with a chance to win Jackson’s empty seat in the forthcoming special election his resignation necessitates. Consequently, the fate of the Great Imaginary Airport will continue to be determined by a long war of retrenchment among various factions, some high profile and others little known.

On one side are Governor Pat Quinn and his army of IDOT technocrats, who have spent $29.8 million of taxpayer money thus far buying up 2,317 acres of land in the as-yet-unapproved airport’s footprint, and are now expanding their holdings through eminent domain proceedings against unwilling sellers.

Aligned with Quinn are various Will County leaders eager for a big fat construction project to provide local jobs, no matter how temporary those might be or whether the long-term prospects of the airport are viable.

On the other side are Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strenuously opposes the project as antithetical to an expanded O’Hare; and United CEO Jeff Smisek, who is on record opposing a third airport for the Chicago region (a view shared by other major airline execs, as well).

Bult Field near Monee, IL (photo: FlightAware)

Joining their ranks are the politically weak but morally righteous grassroots opponents in eastern Will County, who correctly view the airport as a naked land grab by the state; and a guy named Jim Bult, who in a supreme example of irony already owns and runs a small private airport within the footprint of the GIA (Bult Field) and who to my knowledge has no desire to shut down his operation or take his neighbors’ land.

Sure, we’ll miss you, Junior, and all the free theater you provided us over the years. But as for the Great Imaginary Airport controversy in Peotone, the war grinds on.

A version of this article was published as my monthly op-ed column in the 4 December 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For more information from IDOT’s perspective, consult the official South Suburban Airport website. For past news and critical analysis, see the commentary and news reports on this blog.

Walking to Grandma Millie’s

Not long ago I walked with my kids from our home in Joliet to my Grandmother Millie’s house to pay her a friendly visit. The distance is nine-tenths of a mile: long enough for me to get a little exercise, but not so far that my young kids can’t handle it.

Every time I make that walk, I reflect on how lucky we are to live in such close proximity to Gram; and how fortunate it was for me growing up here in Joliet, where I could walk or bike to both of my grandparents’ homes. I often zipped over to Grandma Millie’s in the summer to help Grandpa in his garden, then eat cookies and quaff Dr. Pepper while listening to the Cubs game with Gram.

Grandma Millie with my two girls, Lily and Esmé (June 2012)

These days, urban planners rightly extol the virtues of walkable neighborhoods, where people can stroll from their homes to the post office, train station, school, grocery store, barbershop, and park.

Yet in most American communities, walking is an endangered pastime. Consider the contemporary perversity of driving half a mile to the health club to run five miles on a computerized treadmill. Alternatively (and far more cheaply), I just look for any practical excuse to go walking — like my grandparents did in their day.

Gram was a champion walker most of her life, though it wasn’t always so. As a teenager living on Joliet’s West Side during the Roaring Twenties, she was dropped off at Joliet Township High School downtown by her doting father on his way to work. She wore high-heeled shoes to school and was pleased as punch about it.

A collage of “Gigi” (Great-Grandmother) Millie through the years, created by my wife Laura and daughter Lily for one of Lily’s school assignments in 2010

But then she met Abe Bryson, the son of a laborer whose family was always two steps ahead of poverty. Since his family couldn’t afford a car, Abe walked everywhere — including when he took his stylish new girlfriend Millie out on a date, or gallantly carried her across a muddy cornfield to keep her shoes and stockings clean.

When she once groused after hiking downtown to a Joliet ice cream parlor, he looked down at her feet disapprovingly and said, “Well, maybe you should get yourself a decent pair of shoes, Mil.” Sufficiently smitten with his charms, Gram wasn’t about to let Abe walk out of her life on account of, well, having to walk. So she got some good sensible shoes, and their relationship blossomed.

My grandparents’ walking habits during their courtship and young marriage in the Great Depression would stagger a typically slothful American these days. They thought nothing of walking from Reed Street on the West Side all the way to Pilcher Park on the East Side (over five miles) and then hiking the park’s trails before taking a streetcar home. On Saturday mornings, they’d hoof across the river to deliver my Great-Grandmother Bryson’s home-made donuts to her regular East Side customers.

The announcement of my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary in the Joliet Herald-News

98 years old and blind, Gram’s just about done with walking. Hobbled with a recent hip injury and in the twilight of her life, she’s mostly confined to her bed. But up until recently, she had gingerly moved through her little house, feeling her way along, getting her exercise the best way she knew: walking.

Now that her high-stepping days are finally done, I sense she’s preparing for that last long walk home — the place we all walk to someday.

This essay is an edited version of my monthly op-ed column which appeared as “‘Grandma Millie’ Sets Pace for the Family” in the 12 July 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. My current residence in Joliet is walking distance from my childhood home, which is the very house where my Grandma Millie grew up after my great-grandparents built it in 1925.

To learn more about my Grandma Millie, I highly recommend this interview conducted by my then-eight-year-old daughter, Lily, one day in May of 2010 in Gram’s kitchen (pdf).

Bulldozing the Rights of the People: That’s the Illiana Way

Remember the Prairie Parkway? Just a few years ago, it was the Big New Road Project of choice in northeastern Illinois. A monumentally dumb idea for a whole host of reasons, the Prairie Parkway fortunately fizzled after the recession of 2008 (though old road projects are rather like zombies that can’t be killed once and for all).

The new road of the day is the much ballyhooed Illiana Expressway, which will link the booming metropolises of Lowell, IN, and Wilmington, IL, and in the process pave over a lot of high-quality Midwestern farmland. But the Illiana isn’t a gentle zombie that plods along with a vacant stare. No, this road monster is pure evil, and it’s coming after us with ferocious speed.

Map of proposed routes for the Illiana Expressway (source: IDOT)

Local politicians and IDOT officials claim we need the Illiana to divert truck traffic from I-80 and US-30; support the burgeoning warehouse/distribution center district in central Will County; provide east-west highway access to the yet-to-be-built (or even approved) Peotone Airport; and create jobs.

I’m all for more jobs, especially if they’re permanent ones that pay a living wage with benefits and occur in an environment that does not tolerate sexual harassment of workers. (This, Joliet-area readers know, is not always the case with the warehouse/distribution industry here in Will County.) But the traffic relief  argument smells fishy to me, since this always ends up being, well, a red herring. Remember how I-355 was supposed to relieve traffic on I-55 and 294? Last time I drove those interstates, they were still among the most traffic-choked in the region.

The Peotone Airport reference is the really big red flag, though. Right now, legal but unethical eminent domain proceedings are being wielded by IDOT against Will County landowners unwilling to give up their land for this Great Imaginary Airport that no airline supports.

Now the Illinois legislature has approved “quick-take” powers for IDOT to seize more private property for the Illiana Expressway, an action that should outrage you, fellow citizens. Why?

Start with the gross injustice here. Quick-take allows the state to simply declare it wants a piece of property, then take it. The process is nice and quick — hence the name — and conveniently circumvents the normal eminent domain process (itself hardly benign) by which citizens may take the state to court to fight the condemnation or haggle over a selling price once their property is condemned.

Secondly, the road has no funding. The only money that’s been allocated thus far for the Illiana is $9 million for several years’ worth of environmental impact and planning studies. Projected unfunded construction costs include over $3 billion for the Illinois section alone.

Will County farmland just south of Joliet, June 2006 (M. Bryson)

Finally, and mostly absurdly, IDOT hasn’t decided where the road will go. Right now two different routes for the Illiana are being evaluated (along with, ironically, a “no-build” option to appease malcontents like me). How in the world can IDOT condemn property under quick-take if an official route hasn’t yet been chosen and approved? Does this strike anyone else besides me as completely illogical?

Perhaps this is root of the problem. When it comes to phantom roads and imaginary airports, there are no ethics or logic operating in Springfield.

The road monsters are coming, people. It’s quick-take season now. Better get out of the way, or you’ll get run over.

This essay is a revised version of my op-ed column that appeared in today’s Joliet Herald-News as “Illiana Bulldozing Rights of Citizens in Its Path.” Though I’m not a transportation / planning expert, I tend to think we have plenty of roads in Illinois already. I also appreciate the fact that my Joliet residential street was repaved last week; notably, no new roads were created in that stimulation of the local economy.

The Airport Nobody Wants or Needs

The Saturday before Earth Day, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and a contingent of political supporters rode down to the farmlands of eastern Will County to spade up a little dirt in a pious promotion of the ill-fated Great Imaginary (aka Peotone) Airport.

Given that the project has neither FAA approval nor the support of a single major airline, Jackson’s well-publicized pontifications were presumptuous — but not pointless, for they re-energized the hitherto dispirited airport opposition movement around Peotone, Beecher, and Monee, the small towns most affected by this ongoing fiasco.

I drove out northeast of Peotone that Saturday in hopes of attending Jackson’s media stunt and the planned counter-demonstration by the longstanding grassroots organization Shut This Airport Nightmare Down (STAND). Turned out I was too late and missed them both.

IDOT's South Suburban Airport headquarters on Eagle Lake Road in eastern Will County, aka "The Compound" (M. Bryson)

But after heading past the Illinois Department of Transportation’s heavily-fenced airport headquarters on Eagle Lake Road west of State Route 50 — a place derisively nicknamed “The Compound” by locals for its quasi-military installation appearance — I ran into some folks who helpfully filled me in on the day’s proceedings.

Robert Ogalla, a farmer whose wife Judy is the vice-president of STAND, grows corn, soybeans, and wheat on their picturesque farm along County Road 10. Back in 2003, the Ogallas received a commendation from the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District for their exemplary efforts to reduce soil erosion and polluting runoff on their property.

The Ogalla farm as seen from the south (M. Bryson)

Mr. Ogalla described the lively scene that had transpired earlier that day at the Compound, where over 400 STAND supporters had gathered peacefully to protest Jackson’s groundbreaking event and voice their many objections to the state’s relentless land-acquisition plans.

“This is some of the best farmland in the world,” Ogalla told me, gesturing toward his well-tended fields. “Those trees you see there on the horizon were planted many years ago as part of Illinois’ Conservation Reserve Program by my 101-year-old neighbor.”

He paused to let that sink in, then continued, “All this will be gone if the airport gets built. The irony of it is that no airline even wants it.”

I talk with Virginia Hamann and Rob Ogalla on 21 April 2012 (M. Bryson)

Another STAND member, Virginia Hamann of Peotone, drives a bus for the Peotone School District and helps her husband run a dairy farm located across the road from the proposed airport. “What gets me is the terrible waste of money all this is,” she said.

How wasteful, you might ask? Many of those fertile fields I admired that day already have been purchased by the state — to be precise, 2,471 acres at the cost of 34,014,383 taxpayer dollars — all without FAA approval of the project, naturally. Now, with willing sellers scarce and land values low, IDOT has condemned some local farmers’ property (like that of Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt) to close the deal on the remaining acreage within the Great Imaginary Airport’s nine-square-mile footprint.

When I asked Ogalla and Hamann how their neighbors were feeling about the airport issue these days, they estimated that a strong majority, perhaps 70-80 percent, now backed STAND’s opposition to the project.

Virginia and Rob hold up a STAND sign at Rob's farm (M. Bryson)

So here’s your silver lining. After several years of community demoralization in the face of a seemingly-unstoppable government juggernaut, the awakening provided by Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s grandstanding gambit has re-ignited grassroots opposition to one of the most foolhardy endeavors in Illinois history. Or so I can only hope.

A version of this article was published as my monthly op-ed column in the 3 May 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For more information from IDOT’s perspective, consult the official South Suburban Airport website. For deeper news and critical analysis, see the commentary and news reports on this blog as well as by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune for recent coverage of the political gamesmanship surrounding the Great Imaginary / Peotone / South Suburban / Abraham Lincoln National Airport.

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind building an airport, too — but just a small one for balsa wood planes in my backyard in Joliet. No eminent domain proceedings by IDOT will be necessary in its construction.

Peotone Airport Controversy Takes Off

Today US Representative (IL-D) Jesse Jackson, Jr. will visit eastern Will County with a contingent of supporters and symbolically turn over a few spadefuls of earth in a supposed “groundbreaking” ceremony for the long-contested South Suburban Airport. Airport critics, I’ve learned, plan a protest demonstration today near the site of Jackson’s ceremony. As reported yesterday by the Chicago Sun-Times,

[Jackson] will be joined by ministers who will bless the ground — but not by other elected officials, many of whom consider the symbolic groundbreaking premature. No airline officials will be there to say they think it’s a good idea.

Gov. Pat Quinn has endorsed the airport and his administration has been buying land and negotiating with the FAA to eventually get clearance, but Quinn will not be attending.

In the past week alone, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek both threw cold water on the idea that there is any market for a third airport 30 miles south of Chicago’s Far South Side.

Jackson fought for years against former U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson — both when she was in the state Senate and later when she was a member of Congress representing Peotone — on the topic of Peotone.

Jackson has named his own board to oversee the construction and administration of the airport, which he thinks will bring jobs to the south suburbs and as far north as the South Side.

But Will County officials say they should be the ones running any airport in their own backyard.

Halvorson sided with the Will County officials. U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who succeeded Halvorson, and Will County Board member Cory Singer scheduled a rival news conference Saturday, then switched that to a Monday conference call, to offer their take on the airport.

“If the airport is going to be in Peotone, Will County should absolutely have control over it,” Kinzinger spokeswoman Brooke Hougesen said. Kinzinger is expected to call attention to the recent controversies at the firm Jackson wants to oversee the building of the airport, Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin. The Canadian government raided the firm’s offices last week after its CEO resigned following reports that a consultant tried to smuggle Moammar Gadhafis’s son into Mexico.

Jackson’s persistent enthusiasm for the airport’s construction as a job-creation engine for the South Suburbs was recently buoyed by his re-election to Congress, but conflicts with longstanding political claims by Will County Executive Larry Walsh and other leaders that the county should control the airport, not Jackson’s hand-picked commission. It also flies in the face of grassroots protests by eastern Will County residents of the project as a wasteful, urban sprawl-inducing boondoggle that will destroy prime Illinois farmland, create congestion, and increase air and water pollution.

As if that weren’t enough, the champions of Peotone Airport — including Jackson, Governor Pat Quinn, and the Illinois Department of Transportation — have not produced compelling evidence of sufficient demand from major airline carriers for a third metro airport. This fact was underscored on Thursday, April 19th, at the City Club of Chicago, as reported by the Chicago Tribune:

United Continental Holdings Inc. CEO and Chairman Jeff Smisek says “there’s no demand” for a third airport in the Chicago area.

Smisek spoke Thursday to the civic organization City Club of Chicago. Smisek said any benefits from a proposed third Chicago-area airport near Peotone would damage O’Hare International Airport. Smisek also says it’s more important to modernize air traffic control systems at O’Hare rather than add runways.

It’s hard to imagine how the ill-fated Peotone Airport project, which I’ve written about extensively for the Joliet Herald-News since 2006, can take off given this powerful political opposition. Nevertheless, instead of devoting time and energy to truly beneficial public service activity to mark Earth Day — such as helping clear invasive species from our forest preserves, or taking a stand against continued threats to our air and water supplies — Jackson will be pointlessly turning over a few spadefuls of dirt today in a Will County farm field in a grandstanding attempt to bring attention to his airport fantasies.

Many of those same fields have been purchased by the State of Illinois in an airport land-acquisition plan over the last ten years that has netted 2,471 acres of prime Illinois farmland at the cost of $ 34,014,383 and change (of taxpayer funds) — all without FAA approval of the Peotone Airport project. And with the pool of willing sellers just about dried up, the State has resorted to eminent domain condemnation proceedings against local farmers and landowners in order to stake out the needed land footprint for the phantom airport’s first construction phase.

It’s truly hard to think of a more absurd and unjust example of Illinois’ political follies than this. And yet, the show goes on.

Biking to Work in Joliet, IL

Since I’m discussing transportation this week in my SUST 210 Sustainable Future online class at Roosevelt University, I thought it most appropriate to use my bike to commute to work. Some of our sources I’m analyzing with my students speak directly to the need for active/alternative transportation modes, and how such systems relate to urban design and community structure.

I am not a “hard core” cyclist who buys fancy gear and takes 100-mile rides through the countryside; nor am I an urban bike renegade who likes to blow through any intersection at as high a speed as possible. I consider myself very much an average-ability and safety-minded cyclist of modest endurance, someone who doesn’t mind putting on warm clothes and biking to the train station or to a local destination in cold weather or a drizzle. In the Netherlands, I would be in good company; here in the US, that probably puts me within 0.5% of Americans.

My first decision yesterday: should I really take my bike, or should I drive? I had to go to Joliet’s Barnes and Noble bookstore way out by the Louis Joliet Westfield Mall, a destination located about 6 miles from my house and on a very busy road (US Route 30). Then I had to go to the public library to work, then back home. It would be a long trip, and I had a lot to do that day. Did I really have time for all that? And what about carrying my notes and computer on my back, plus the presents I would be purchasing at the bookstore?

It was cold, 28 degrees F, but sunny and not too windy — and I decided to try it. After all, biking would keep my GHG emissions down to zero, plus I’d get some much-needed February exercise. The extra time from biking would be more than repaid by the free workout I’d be getting! My rationalization complete, I tapped into my somewhat extensive personal knowledge of safe Joliet street/trail routes, and headed off. Here is a map of the route I took.

Note the out-of-the-way path I took to get to the bookstore, a 6.1 mile trip that could’ve been much shorter had I traveled directly. But Route 30 is a busy and dangerous road, and I prefer to avoid hi-traffic streets. There are no bike lanes on Rt. 30. In fact, there are no bike lanes anywhere in Joliet. So I took a quiet E-W residential route to a N-S rails-to-trails path on Joliet’s West Side, then headed north along the trail. That linked up with another trail, one within the Will County Forest Preserve’s Rock Run Marsh. Consequently, even though I was in a highly developed part of Joliet’s West Side, much of my ride was bucolic, and all of it was safe and quiet, except for crossing busy arterial streets. This is a route I’ve ridden with my kids many times. You can see water, trees, cattails, and prairie grasses; you can hear and see a lot of birds. It’s a nice way to travel.

That left me with a short job on Route 30 to get to the bookstore, which actually was OK. Once there, I was able to relax while listening to Miles Davis on the store radio, surrounded by books (itself a delight), and with good access to a bathroom and the BN cafe, which has free wi-fi. Life was good!

My ride to the public library was shorter, but on a busy N-S road on Joliet’s West Side. Lots of room for cars, but no dedicated bike lane here. As noted above, there no bike lanes in the city of Joliet, a real flaw in the town’s transportation infrastructure. Despite this deficiency, parts of town are very bike-able because of a plethora of quiet residential streets, some of which cut through town in helpful ways. However, this network is very limited, and known only to people who seek out such knowledge.

Back to my journey to the library: Essington Road had a good sidewalk, so I used that as well as the street to head south to my destination. Upon reading the Rock Run Forest Preserve trailhead, I left the street and rode a paved trail the rest of the way to the library, which sits on the eastern edge of the preserve and has beautiful views of its woods and marshlands. It is always uplifting to my spirits to come here, and sometimes I take a short break from working at the library to take a stroll in the woods or along the marsh’s edge.

So, my commute to work was about 9.5 miles, according to Google maps (which lets you map out bike routes, by the way), plus the 3.5 miles home after my library session (13 miles total). My total commuting time for this workday was 30min + 18min + 20min for the three legs of the commute, or 68min total. This compares most favorably with my door-to-door commute to the Schaumburg Campus (120min in the car) or my train commute to downtown Chicago (1hr 45min each way, door-to-door, or 3.5 hours total).

Guess how many bikes I saw on my cycling route yesterday? None. I did see several people walking or working in their yards, and all of us greeted each other with a pleasant hello. (I don’t do that while driving; do you?) I also saw hundreds of cars. I can’t recall if I saw a PACE bus, which probably means I didn’t.

The Peotone Airport’s Ongoing Tragicomedy

Thank goodness for the intransigence and political buffoonery of our Illinois public officials. Without their ceaseless bickering, the ill-fated and monumentally stupid Great Imaginary Airport project envisioned near Peotone might actually get off the ground.

As it is, the GIA — known variously as the South Suburban Airport (its IDOT-sanctioned title) and the Abraham Lincoln National Airport (Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s grandiose appellation) — exists only in the misguided minds of transportation technocrats and Pollyannaish politicians.

Farmland near Peotone, IL -- the proposed site of the Great Imaginary Airport (photo: Chicago Tribune)

This bizarre state of affairs stems, in part, from our elected leaders having serious control issues. Ever since I began writing about the GIA fiasco in 2007, debate has raged about who gets to sit on the airport’s board, what to call the facility (see above), and which paint colors should adorn the terminal’s bathroom walls.

What gets overlooked in this petty drama are two things far more important and disturbing: (1) the grand fiscal folly of a bankrupt state spending untold millions to construct an airport 40 miles from Chicago’s Loop that no commercial airline wants; and (2) the grotesque social injustice of government land grabs perpetrated against law-abiding, tax-paying rural landowners within the phantom airport’s ghostly footprint.

The GIA is so far from physical realization that even its most ardent supporters have no idea when it might actually be built. Due to the project’s incompetent political sponsorship thus far, final FAA approval is probably still years away and far from guaranteed. At least I hope so.

Despite those damning facts — and the stark economic reality that Illinois is billions of dollars in the red and cannot even pay its regular bills as required by law — Governor Quinn continues to pledge $100 million of state money for additional land acquisition for the GIA.

That’s not counting the money we’ve already blown. To date, IDOT has spent $34,014,383 and change (of taxpayer funds) acquiring 2,471 acres of prime Will County farmland surrounded by the small towns of Peotone, Beecher, and Monee. But since thousands of acres remain in private hands within the GIA’s footprint, and with land prices at historic lows, IDOT officials have stepped up the pressure on unwilling sellers by commencing formal condemnation proceedings.

Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt at their home outside of Beecher, IL, where they've lived for 50 years (photo: David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)

This means that folks like Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt, who had hoped to retire on their farm near Beecher as they enter their sunset years, are being taken to court and will have their land condemned. What the State wants, the State gets.

“We got the letter sometime late in the fall,” Vivian told me the other day after I gave her a call. “I’ve no doubt in my mind the state will take our land. There’s nothing we can do. It’s just a matter of time now.”

I asked Vivian how people in Beecher felt about the GIA. “Some support it, because they think it will be an economic boost,” she admitted. “But a lot oppose it. The community is split, I suppose. And the thing is, most people can’t even think about it anymore. They’ve had the airport hanging over their heads for so long, they seem to have become numb.”

I ask you this: why is Illinois spending millions of dollars it doesn’t have to take citizens like the Bramstaedts to court and condemn their property? How can such a thing be tolerated by my fellow citizens in the Land of Lincoln? And why don’t any of our elected representatives have the backbone to stand up and state the truth about the monumental waste and injustice of Peotone’s Great Imaginary Airport?

A version of this essay appears as my monthly op-ed column (“Great Imaginary Airport a Boondoggle for Illinois“) in the 23 Feb 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For information about the airport’s plan, land acquisition data, maps, documents for FAA reviews, etc., see the official IDOT website.

And for additional commentary, check out my previous columns from the Herald-News about the Peotone Airport archived on this site.