Part 3: US 150 Must Go - Downtown is (not currently) for People
A highway doesn't make a good place for people
See Part One and Part 2 of the Downtown is (not currently) for People Series
It is my opinion that if Downtown Galesburg is going to be revived in the 21st century that U.S. Route 150 must be rerouted out of town. 150 runs straight through Galesburg. It comes up Grand Avenue from Knoxville, goes down Main Street straight through Downtown on to Henderson Street, and then follows Henderson Street until it leaves town north towards Alpha. With this highway going through our town I believe our chances of revival are less than if the highway was rerouted outside of town. Not only that but makes our city worse off regardless of a potential revival.
Why would a highway going through town set us up for failure? Street design matters a lot to how an area develops. If speeds are higher and streets are wider then it’s not going to be a place where people necessarily want to go, consciously or not. Have you ever walked down Henderson Street? I have a few times and it’s not really a pleasant walking experience. With cars driving real fast, no protection if cars veer off the road, and the noise it’s not really a place for people.
Similar principles apply to downtown. Main Street is currently set up to optimize the number of cars that can drive through downtown. The lanes are as wide as the interstate lanes, there are 4 to 5 lanes to carry more cars, the square was turned from a square into a roundabout to carry more traffic, all the joining streets have right turn lanes to get more vehicles through the intersection, and the street lights are timed so that drivers can make it all the way across downtown in one direction without being stopped. Our Main Street is set up to cater to cars as much as possible while providing minimum support for pedestrians.
If we want our downtown to flourish we’re going to need to rework our Main Street to cater more to people than our cars. Main Street is currently treated more like a drag strip that’s a burden to travel through than a place to go to. And as a highway that’s kinda the point. The Illinois Department of Transportation has jurisdiction of the inner two lanes of the road, but all design decisions need to be approved by them, even for the parts they aren’t directly responsible for. The mission of IDOT on their roads is to move the maximum number of cars down a stretch of road, and with that mission they aren’t going to want to approve design changes that hamper that goal even in the name of a more thriving downtown.
So in order to reclaim our Main Street we need US 150 to go, by why was it ever here in the first place?
Why have a highway go through town to begin with?
I tend to be a believer that things happen for reasons. This isn’t in a biblical, spiritual, or moral sense, but that there tend to be rational reasons why humans make big decisions like “where a highway goes”.
In the very early days of highway construction it was a relatively new phenomenon and the various governments involved were still figuring things out. At the time there was very little money available to build these highways, or at least much less money than was available to build the interstates. This meant that states trying to build roads would capitalize on as many existing roads as possible.
So if a city wanted to be connected to a highway they were most likely going to have to give up some of their city streets to the project. Again they were trying to minimize cost so they wouldn’t build a highway going around a town if they could use existing streets.
So if you were going to run a highway through town then it makes sense that you’d want to run it through the part of town where all your businesses were. Which also made sense because the other major type of road: railroads, took passengers right to the heart of cities. It made sense to think that highways should do the same to bring people right into the heart of town. Also when US 150 was constructed there weren’t all the car catering businesses on the outside of town, there was only the downtown district with all its shops. So it made sense to make the major road go downtown.
Also at the time there was reasonable belief that someone driving through town would stop at businesses along the way. When US 150 was established driving was a completely different activity than what we do now. Driving was at the time mostly a leisure activity taken on by the upper ranks of society. It was not the necessity of regular transportation that it is now for most people. So when people went on travels there may have been a good chance that they’d stop off at shops along the way because that was seen as part of the traveling experience. There would be even more reason to because all the shops they see in town would be unique shops they hadn’t been to before, contrast to today where most of the stores along Route 150 are franchises that can be found anywhere. It may have been plausible that this was a good idea in the past, but then things changed.
Driving Changed
Boy did it, in the 96 years since US 150 much has changed about driving.
First, as mentioned above, our reasons and approach to driving has changed. Driving is no longer a leisure activity that only the privileged engage in. Driving is an activity that most people in our society do and is done solely as direct transportation. Sure every once in awhile we’ll go on little adventures, but most driving it just going somewhere with a set destination in mind and trying to get there as fast as possible to minimize the amount of time we have to drive
Second, the Interstate system was established. This created new roads that completely bypassed local traffic and kept you moving at high speeds. So if someone is driving only for transportation and not for leisure or adventure, they are most likely going to travel on the Interstate because it is the fastest route.
Lastly, the way we navigate the streets and get directions has changed DRASTICALLY. It used to be that when you were driving you had to follow the road signs closely to make sure you were staying on the correct road. This meant that if you were going somewhere you’d look on a map, see the minimum number of roads you’d need to use, and then stick closely to that plan by following the signs. Don’t go too far off course because you might get lost. Now with GPS tracking we can travel the fastest possible route with relative ease with little fear of getting lost. This means that people almost never take an inefficient route.
US 150’s routing is currently good for nobody
If US 150 was the only highway running through the area and people still navigated only by road signs, then there’d still probably be a good case for keeping US 150 running through town. But that is simply not the case.
Below is a screenshot from Google maps. These are the directions from a point in the middle of Knoxville going to a point just North of Galesburg. Both of these points are on US 150. You’d think Google would maybe offer one of the routes as following 150? Nope! It does not even consider that. (Red is US 150)
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Now let’s move the marker down a little bit to in front of R.P. Lumber on the outskirts of Knoxville, a little closer to Galesburg. We see that it suggests turning back to get on 74, go down County Road 9 through East Galesburg, or County 10 over the rail yard and up Linwood Rd/Carl Sandburg Drive
Again this was from one point on US 150 to another point on US 150 and it still does not recommend going through downtown on the same road.
Even when I move the marker up to in front of PZ’s place, it still recommends two other routes before going down Main Street. It still first recommends getting on 74 to save 3 minutes on the trip.
Now I’m not sure if anyone local would do this route intuitively, we’d go through downtown even if getting on 74 from that point was a little faster. But the point is that at this point in history U.S. Route 150 as pavement really only services locals and people who are leisure driving down US 150 for enjoyment. And how many people do you think are doing the second option? Not enough to justify the continued existence of US 150 running through town.
How many people could possibly be going on leisurely drives? By looking at this map of Annual Average Daily Traffic from IDOT we can see the average daily traffic going along Grand Avenue at the town line is 5950 vehicles a day. We can also see that there are 3600 vehicles visiting the stretch of road just north of Galesburg. So theoretically there could be a maximum of 3600 cars traveling through Galesburg on Route 150 every day. I think that number is still high but we can go with it. Suppose 1% of those vehicles are people going on a leisure drive through town by just following US 150, that gets us to 36 cars per day. Then let's say 10% of them stop in town. Which gets us to 3.6 cars per day. Now maybe my numbers are way way off, but just as a number to have a jumping off point to start the conversation: is 3.6 travelers stopping per day in town enough to justify having a US highway run through town? I think not. Nobody is coming to Galesburg just because of US 150 being an officially designated highway through town.
So US 150:
Doesn’t serve locals because we’d use the road regardless of it being designated a US Highway
Doesn’t serve local businesses because the current road setup prevents downtown businesses from thriving
Doesn’t serve travelers because it is an inefficient way to get from one side of town to the other
Doesn’t help IDOT because it’s another road they have to maintain and doesn’t even serve as an efficient route through the area
Doesn’t serve the local government because it has to wait on the state to make repairs to the sections of road going through town in addition to hampering its ability to foster new development which is otherwise unlikely to happen along a highway
The only upside is that the state is financially responsible for the repair of the inner two lanes of the road, but it takes years and years and years to get it repaired. This isn’t to say that our local governments would necessarily have the cash faster, but I think the benefits of rerouting 150 far outweigh the loss of repair money we’d lose.
The Where and How of a Reroute
I think we have a few options if we are going to reroute. In the below image Red is US 150 as it stands today:
Green shows the most logical reroute that would have people get on 74 before they cross over it into Knoxville. If Knoxville wants to keep US 150 going through their town then we still have the Blue option which is essentially the same as Green except goes through Knoxville. There is also the Purple option that bypasses town from the South but is a less efficient option compared to the first two. I believe we should go with Green or Blue, this would reroute 150 out of town while also being a deal for IDOT due to it being fewer miles of road for them to maintain.
But even if we want to reroute the Highway, what do we even need to do? First the city would need to petition the IDOT to get the jurisdiction of the road changed. This process is at least partially outlined in this IDOT Local Roads and Streets Manual, Section 5-2 starting on page 160 of the pdf. Then IDOT, if they approve the transfer, would then need to petition the Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering which would then ultimately need to approve the change.
This would be a big uphill battle for sure because there is a lot entrenched in this, but it can be done. Reroutes and renumbering happen across the country, but mostly due to new roads being constructed or special designations. A town somewhat close to us that has made a change recently was Dubuque IA when it got the routing for US 52 changed after they built a new bypass road. I know it’s a different state but it shows it can be done.
A slightly longer drive could do so much good for the town
If I asked you the question: Would you rather be able to drive through downtown 30 seconds faster if it means killing off downtown, or would you rather it take 30 seconds longer to drive through downtown but it can be a thriving place? Almost everyone (I would think) would choose the second option, but in practice we’ve chosen the first option to drive faster but have a downtown where growth is difficult. As we’ve seen that tradeoff hasn’t even amounted to much in terms of travel speed, US 150 is the worst way to get from one side of town to the other.
Without rerouting US Route 150 out of Galesburg I believe it will be hard for Downtown to reach its true potential. It can be a thriving place once again but it will be much much much harder with a US highway running through the middle of it. Regardless of how cooperative IDOT is of any changes it doesn’t change the fact that their mission is to move as many cars as possible, and that mission is not compatible with what we need to see our downtown revived. In Part 4 I’ll provide a grand vision of what Downtown and specifically Main Street could look like, which will be far from what IDOT would recommend if it keeps jurisdiction of US 150.