Connecting
Communities
McHenry County
September 19, 2001
A Picture of McHenry County Today
Rolling farmland, Victorian towns, new sub-divisions and
corporate facilities. Images of McHenry County include
all these and more. Lake in the Hills grew 300% in the
last decade and is building homes, schools, roads, and
stores at a very rapid rate. The county seat, Woodstock,
is a picture perfect Victorian town, complete with a
gazebo in the town square, an opera house, and a turn-
of-the century jail converted into a restaurant
. Motorola
located a major division in Harvard, in the northwest
corner of the county in 1994. Del Webb Corporation
recently completed a development in Huntley catering to
older adults, the first of its kind in a northern state.
McHenry County is the fastest growing county in the
metropolitan region and the least populated, at 260,000
residents. In spite of rapid commercial and residential
development recently, the primary use of land in
McHenry County is still agricultural. Agricultural land is
62% of total land and contributed $110 million to
McHenry County's economy in 1997. Other significant
natural assets include oak savannas and prairies, and
high quality streams like the Kishwaukee River.
Preservation of agricultural land and open space is a
prime value in McHenry County. The town of
Woodstock has rezoned land to return it to agricultural
rather than residential zoning. A successful open space
referendum in the spring of 2001 for the McHenry
County Conservation District resulted in $68.5 million in
new bonding capacity to acquire open space.
Who We Are
We came from towns like Cary, McHenry, Crystal Lake,
Marengo, and the rural areas around these towns, and
we met in Woodstock. Many of us are members of the
McHenry County Defenders, the environmental
organization that co-sponsored the Connecting
Communities Summit. Some of us were advocates for
economic justice or representatives of disabled
populations. Others came from civic organizations, state,
municipal or county offices, and local religious or
educational institutions. There were more females than
males at our summit (64% vs. 36%), and our group was
predominantly white, as is McHenry County.
We place a high value on conserving the land around us
and on our friendly, small-town way of life. We are
fearful that too much development, or poorly planned
development, threatens the quality of life that we value
so highly. We place a very high value on having choices
about how to get around, but we are severely limited in
our ability to make trips that don't involve cars by a lack
of sidewalks, bike routes and transit.
Health is an important consideration for us too. That
includes human health and environmental health. We
value walkable neighborhoods and want more
opportunities to walk and cycle. Congestion is not as
critical an issue for most of us as it is to others in the
metropolitan area, but we fear that excessive auto traffic
will degrade our quality of life if we don't have a balance
of options in the future. Safety of movement is very
important to us.
We gathered eight days after the horrific attack on the
World Trade Towers in New York, determined to plan for
the future, less sure than we had been of what the future
is likely to hold for us. We were more aware of our
vulnerability and of our interconnectedness. Our
concerns about dependence on private vehicles and on
foreign oil are not platitudes but real sources of disquiet.
We would like to have more options for travel within and
beyond our own area.
We find ourselves distressingly limited to automobile
travel at this point in time. Sixty-two percent of us are
more than one mile from transit; in order to access transit
we must use our cars. Fourty percent of us used transit
in the last month. Virtually all of our households
(average household size 2.3 people) have two cars. But
our top priorities for improving travel are: 1) transit; 2)
pedestrian access; 3) environmental protection; and 4)
bicycle access. We want choices!
Challenges and Solutions
Too Many Trips Must Start and End in a Car
Even for those of us who use Metra trains or ride bikes
frequently, we usually must drive to a train station or bike
path to begin our trip. Bus service is very sparse. There
are only three bus routes in all of McHenry County and
they have minimal weekday, rush hour service. Our
county needs a system of shuttle buses that move
between the communities and to the train stations. While
the population of our
county is the lowest in
the region, over half of
our population resides in
just six towns:
Algonquin, Cary, Crystal
Lake, Lake in the Hills,
McHenry, and
Woodstock.
The recommendations of
our groups were heavily
weighted toward shuttle
buses and trolleys in
various configurations.
Three groups made
roughly similar route
recommendations (see map). One recommendation was
for shuttles radiating out from Woodstock to other major
towns in all directions. Another recommendation was for
three "hubs" in McHenry, Woodstock and Crystal Lake,
with service between all three and feeder service into the
hubs. Major institutions like McHenry County College,
the County Court House and two local hospitals were
also seen as needing shuttle service.
Better transit access to Lake County is particularly
important, since many of us have jobs there that we
cannot reach except by driving. The counties
neighboring McHenry need better connections to each
other, especially to their central employment locations.
We felt that bicycling could be a more useful mode of
travel with just minor modifications to the existing
roadways. Paving a bike lane along roads in the county
would create a safe and smooth riding surface. The
existing gravel shoulders do not allow us to start or end
our bike trips on local roads. To be safe, we must drive
our cars to paths that are often more recreational in
purpose than functional. We believe that bicycling is a
legitimate mode for practical trips to work, to transit, to
school and to stores. Providing the five to eight feet
necessary for bike lanes on the shoulder of the road is
inexpensive relative to the price of adding full lanes and
helps protect our air quality.
An innovative way to integrate our travel modes would
be to provide park-and-rides that would allow drivers to
aggregate and car pool, and also offer "Bike Station"
facilities to encourage some commuters to bike to their
car pool site rather than drive.
Train Service Is Good; More Would Be Better
Train service is very limited; more convenient service is
necessary to increase usage. Better linkage between
train service and bus
service would also
promote use. Central
McHenry County is an
hour and a half from
the Loop; more
express trains would
be welcome. A link
between existing train
lines from the town of
McHenry and
Jefferson Park would
increase access to
O'Hare International
Airport and the
Northwest side of
Chicago.
We would like to see freight lines used for additional
commuter rail, including expanded service from Rockford
to Chicago and Richmond to Fox Lake. We would be
well served by improvements to the line from Southern
Wisconsin and Richmond in order to access Chicago. A
line between Crystal Lake, McHenry, and Ringwood
should also be initiated to accomodate inter-suburban
travel. Better train accessibility between McHenry
county and Lake and Kane counties is also important to
us. While we are very supportive of new rail, we are
also wary about the possibility that rail lines can cause
sprawling development. Parking at Metra stations is
sometimes a problem, and we feel that it could be
improved by making the rules more flexible on parking
in "reserved" spaces. We caution that development
near rail should take advantage of its natural assets by
encouraging walkable, transit-oriented and mixed-use
development.
Sprawl Threatens Our Way of Life
There is a growing tendency in McHenry County to
promote sprawl, or low-density development. This
trend will make transit service even harder to provide in
the future than it is today. In addition, sprawl
encroaches on the habitats of threatened and
endangered species. Fragile wetlands like Lake in the
Hills Fen, Alden Sedge Meadows, and Exner Marsh
and high quality streams like the Kishwaukeee River
and Nippersink Creek are threatened by sprawl
development. Valuable farmland needs to be protected;
farm vehicles already have a tough time co-existing
with fast-moving vehicles. Low-density development is
also unlikely to be affordable to many people who work
in McHenry County. If we want to avoid gridlock, we
have to create "live where you work" communities for
a wide range of income groups. We should apply the
principles of compact, mixed-use development and
educate people about its value. Building more compact
communities will help to keep taxes lower for everyone
by reducing the amount of investment in roads, school
buses and other essential services.
Proper stewardship of the environment requires good
planning. This is equally true for air quality, water
quality, wildlife and open space. We should reach
consensus on how to use our land before building new
transportation projects. We should use the
infrastructure we already have in ways that require less
car travel to preserve our environment and save money.
Better regional planning would reduce municipal
competition for development and benefit everyone. In
order to preserve open space and agriculture we should
limit growth in the western part of the county.
The Market Plays a Role Too
We welcome the jobs brought by new corporate
neighbors, but caution that we encourage them to be
good neighbors. Employers who choose inaccessible
locations should be required to provide shuttle services
for their employees so that the existing roads are not
clogged. We don't want to lose more farmland to road
building. We encourage businesses to take active steps
to promote workforce housing near their jobs, utilizing
newly enacted legislation with such incentives. We
believe that incentives should be offered to developers
who build transit-oriented developments.
If cars were taxed by environmental impact, fewer
people would waste non-renewable resources and we
could decrease our dependence on foreign oil. Higher
taxes on gasoline would also encourage people to drive
less. "Hybrid cars" should be more affordable.
Safe and Healthy Alternatives Should Be Offered
Many of us wanted explore safe crossing alternatives to
crosswalks at dangerous intersections. In addition to the
risks of injury posed by heavy auto traffic, we are
concerned with the deteriorating health and physical
activity of our youngsters. We recommend building
many more sidewalks in all the populated parts of the
county, but especially around train stations, commercial
districts and schools.
Bicycle trips to accomplish practical as well as recre-
ational purposes should be encouraged. Bike trails and
lanes should be created that connect neighborhoods and
towns to commerce centers, other neighborhoods, and
cities. Existing and planned bike paths like the Prairie
Trail and the Huntley-Union-Marengo Trail should be
expanded and linked. Bikeways should link to Conserva-
tion District sites.
Our Vision and Values
We envision a McHenry County that values and
preserves its agricultural land, natural resources, and
open space, especially by preserving land to the west of
Route 47. Good planning is an important component to
managing future growth. Our definition of good planning
includes a priority on air and water quality. The public
should be engaged, together with elected leaders, on
planning for the future. Communities should plan
together rather than compete with each other for
development. We envision a place where there is a
balance of jobs and housing in proximity to each other
and to transit. In an ideal future, many more trips will
start on foot because our communities will be pleasant
and safe places to walk. Townspeople will have a variety
of options for efficient and healthful travel and children
will play and travel in safe communities. We will have a
range of transportation choices rather than being
restricted to automobile travel for most everything we do.
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest
Chicago Design Consortium
Chicago Metropolis 2020
Chicago Rehab Network
Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
Citizen Action-Illinois
Council for Disability Rights
Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest
Friends of the Chicago River
Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization
Interreligious Sustainability Project
League of Women Voters of Illinois
Metro Seniors in Action
Metropolitan Planning Council
Mid America Institute on Poverty
Sierra Club
Sustain
The McHenry County Connecting Communities staff is especially grateful to the
McHenry County Defenders
for their support and assistance in this summit.
Connecting Communities Regional Partners
Recommendations
Preserve our agricultural heritage and our invaluable open space.
Aggressive steps need to be taken by county and state officials to protect farms from encroachment by roads and
subdivisions. The Kane County 2020 plan should be a model for McHenry County. Growth west of Route 47 should be
limited to preserve farming. Wetlands, high quality streams, and forested areas are irreplaceable assets that must be
protected. More funds should be set aside to purchase and preserve open space.
Coordinate transportation planning with business, education and regional leaders.
Good land use planning should include and be integrated with a viable transportation plan. Land use planning should
emphasize preservation of the cultural and historical value of each community. Transit-oriented development principles
should be applied at train stations and bus nodes in order to spur local economic activity. Schools should be accessible
on foot and by bicycle. Local employers need to be involved in creating affordable housing opportunities locally and in
promoting auto-alternative travel. Road improvements are needed too, but it is better to improve existing roads than to
build new ones. Implementation of the Strategic Regional Arterials plan (for roads such as US Routes 14 and 20, and
State Highways 47, 173, 176, 120) should be fast-tracked, and should include three lane roads with turning lanes as an
alternative to four lane roads.
Use innovative shuttle service to connect McHenry County communities to job centers and train stations.
We visualize our major communities as having a triangular relationship to each other and would like shuttle service to
connect communities and rail stations in that orientation. The primary nodes of the triangle are Crystal Lake, McHenry
and Woodstock. We propose a system using trolleys, shuttles and/or vans to provide frequent service around the triangle
and to points radiating out to Harvard and Marengo at minimum. Job sites, the hospitals, the college, and the court house
are other essential destinations that must be served by transit.
Expand and coordinate rail service.
Suburb-to-suburb travel could be enhanced by expanded train service on the line from Fox Lake to Richmond, and from
Rockford to Chicago. More frequent service on existing lines would encourage greater use. Express trains should be
offered from Crystal Lake to the Loop. The Jefferson Park Blue Line stop and the Metra stop at Jefferson Park need
to be linked for ease of access to the Northwest side of Chicago and to O'Hare. A system of park-and-ride lots with
Bike Stations should serve as a "feeder" system to get more commuters to train stations (as well as other destinations)
without consuming so much in-town land for parking lots at the stations.
A comprehensive network of sidewalks and bicycle routes is essential and fiscally responsible.
Encouraging walking and biking requires very minimal investment in sidewalks and bike routes - an economical approach
compared to new road lanes. All towns, malls and residential developments should have abundant sidewalks.
Developers should be required to build sidewalks and bike routes into all new developments. Local roads should be
retrofitted with bike lanes for exclusive bicycle travel. Bicycle travel for practical as well as recreational purposes must
be accommodated. Roads that have become uncrossable by pedestrians need to use a range of available strategies to
allow pedestrians safe passage.
The Citizen Transportation Plan is a project of the Chicagoland Transportation and Air
Quality Commission, part of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, 2125 W. North Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60647, 773-278-4800, ext. 2030. Visit us on the web at www.cnt.org/2030.