Oak Street Bridge Solutions Brainstormed

The Oak Street Bridge Community Working Group met Wednesday night for an “alternative development workshop” to identify options to fix the one-way-at-a-time crossing’s current problems.

One idea for a solution included the seemingly obvious two-way operating bridge at the same spot, just north of Chicago Avenue and Oak Street. But others were a grade crossing at Park Avenue, an underpass at County Line Road, and even a no-build scenario in which the Oak Street Bridge would be closed without any replacement.

Stacie Dovalovsky of Clark Dietz, the engineering firm hired by the Village of Hinsdale as a consultant for the project, presented a purpose statement for the Oak Street Bridge project Wednesday, which identified four basic purposes: to improve access for emergency service providers, improve traffic operations, improve traffic safety, and provide a durable, aesthetic grade separated crossing of the BNSF Railroad.

Dovalovsky said the purpose statement must be backed up by data in order to secure the federal funding from the Federal Highway Administration the village is banking on.

“The ‘why’ and the facts have to come together in the purpose and the need,” Dovalovsky said.

Among the data that have been collected are traffic patterns, studies of the bridge’s steel girders, and load-limit restrictions.

According to the official website of the Oak Street Bridge project, “Oak Street Bridge’s 100 year-old steel and timber structure is reaching the end of its useful life. Recent inspections have identified substandard capacity, insufficient vertical clearance under the bridge, poor sight distance over the bridge, and an uneven walkway for pedestrians as existing deficiencies.”

The website discusses the option of updating the bridge where it stands.

“Replacement of the bridge would bring the only above-grade railroad crossing in Hinsdale up to current design standards, improve emergency response time and regional railroad capacity, and maintain access to schools, parks and .”

There were 26 members of the working group in attendance Wednesday. Some were area residents while others were representing interests that included the Board of Trustees, the Hinsdale police and fire departments, the chamber of commerce, and Adventist Hinsdale Hospital.

“It’s not only about getting them into the process early,” Clark Dietz senior vice president Allen Staron said of the stakeholders being represented on the community working group, "It’s about continuing the back and forth throughout the process.”

During a 20-minute brainstorming session, the attendees poured over aerial photographs of the current crossing and scribbled with marker their possible solutions.

The next step in the solution-development process, according to Staron, is a public meeting open at the Memorial Hall sometime in late August or early September. There, he said, the entire community would get a project update, be presented the purpose statement as well as the alternatives the community working group came up with Wednesday and the evaluation process for those alternatives.

The community working group first met March 21 at the Hinsdale Public Library to get an introduction to the public involvement process and create a list of needs a new Oak Street Bridge would serve.

The eight needs the group came up with at that first meeting were hospital access, improved north-south traffic, optimized use for residents, that it “look good and last long,” that the bridge provide an unobstructed emergency access route, improve local traffic, be a safe pedestrian crossing, and have improved sight lines.