Longmeadow Parkway nearing completion in Kane County, with no tolls attached

If you live in or around northern Kane County, chances are you’ve heard about the Longmeadow Parkway.

Soon, you’ll get to drive it to cross the Fox River — and you won’t have to pay a toll.

The 5.6-mile stretch of Longmeadow Parkway, which has been in the works for decades and includes a bridge over the Fox River, is nearing completion and anticipated to open, sans toll bridge, sometime in mid- to late-September, said Steve Coffinbargar, assistant director of the Kane County Division of Transportation. The roadway stretches through portions of Algonquin, Carpentersville, Barrington Hills and unincorporated Kane County.

“It’s going to be a game changer for people,” Carpentersville Village President John Skillman said.

Longmeadow Parkway is expected to ease congestion on other nearby bridges. Currently, drivers in the area cross the Fox River via bridges on Route 62 in Algonquin, Route 72 in East and West Dundee or Main Street in Carpentersville.

The roadway has been built in stages through the years as the county has acquired the property needed for the project. The bridge and nearly all of the Longmeadow Parkway are complete. Crews are finishing a 2,000-foot stretch that will connect the last leg to its eastern ending point at Bolz Road, Coffinbargar said.

When completed, the road will stretch from Huntley/Boyer Road to the west and Route 62 to the east. The corridor also includes a bike and pedestrian path that will connect to the Fox River Trail.

Municipal officials anticipate the road will bring new development. Earlier this year, Carpentersville annexed about 150 acres off Huntley Road near the western end of the corridor and already has had developers express interest in the property.

County leaders initially planned to charge drivers a toll to use Longmeadow. However, the toll was dropped earlier this year after officials successfully lobbied the state for $30 million to cover the remaining costs of the $205 million project. Overall, Kane County covered the bulk of the project costs, roughly $130 million, while state and federal agencies covered the remainder. McHenry County, which also benefits from the project, contributed $1 million toward the project.

“What’s exciting for me is that with that toll removed, we will have free-flowing traffic back and forth,” said Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog, adding that a toll booth could have caused traffic delays. “There won’t be an impediment to traffic.”

The parkway, which has been talked about since the 1980s and began in earnest in the early 2000s, is Kane County’s second “once-in-a-lifetime” construction project. The other? The Stearns Road corridor and bridge in South Elgin.

Noting that “complicated projects often take time,” Pierog said the result will benefit the traveling public for generations to come.

“It’s a bridge that’s going to last a lifetime and several lifetimes thereafter,” she said. “When you think about its span and use, 20 years in the making doesn’t seem like a long time.”

It also is the fifth and final project in a group of Kane County transportation priorities, dating back to the late 1990s, dubbed SALIO for the Stearns Road bridge, Anderson Road railroad crossing grade separation in Elgin, a full interchange at Interstate 90 and Route 47 and the Orchard Road reconstruction.

“This is huge,” Coffinbargar said, adding he and others at the department of transportation have spent much of their careers working on these projects. “Many of us have been in the industry for 30-plus years and having this project completed as we’re heading off into the sunset … it’s a big satisfaction.”