Pulse: Team work is key to Route 59 success
July 31, 2011 9:36PM
State Sen. Linda Holmes, 42nd District
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Updated: November 2, 2011 3:31PM
State Rep. Tom Cross, R-Oswego, didn’t mention names but did allude to politicians not being able to work together “in this country and in this state” when speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reconstructed section of Route 59 in Plainfield.
Aside from the state’s own budget woes, the debt-ceiling crisis in Washington seemed to be getting worse by the minute at the time that state, county and village officials were celebrating the near-completion of the $89 million project that widened and improved seven miles of road through Plainfield, Joliet and Shorewood and created a new interchange at Interstate 55.
“Projects like this don’t happen unless everybody comes together,” Cross told the audience. “This is an example of people working together — not fighting — to get something done.”
Try this route
State Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Plainfield, also at the ribbon-cutting, spoke for many motorists as she talked about getting through Plainfield while traveling her 42nd Legislative District during Route 59 construction.
“I have found ways of going from Aurora to Shorewood using every possible route except going on Route 59,” she said. Drauden Road was her favorite.
Trouble on the tracks
Plainfield traffic police sometimes focus on certain parts of town, and recently they checked for vehicles violating railroad crossing rules at Route 126.
Some of the things they saw were amazing, said Mayor Michael Collins.
“They cited petroleum trucks parked across the tracks,” Collins said. “You knock on the (truck) door, and you say, ‘What in the world are you thinking.’”
Housing blues
Joliet land developer George Barr typically works on commercial projects but he noted last week how much the housing slump hurts everyone, especially when American manufacturing keeps slipping away to other countries.
“What we’re used to making is houses, and we’re not making houses anymore,” he said. “That was pretty much American made, and it was American labor that made it.”
Not online
Dianne Harmon, new director of the Joliet Public Library, said people are mistaken if they think they can find everything on the Internet.
“It’s not all out there,” she said. “There an enormous amount of information that’s not on the Internet.”
For example?
Certain research tools are not available on the Internet, she said. And, Harmon noted, “We have the microfilm for Joliet newspapers from the middle 1800s,”
Bob Okon contributed to Pulse.
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