Recommendation
Coordinate infrastructure operations and maintenance

The region’s transportation, water, and other infrastructure extends across multiple jurisdictions, requiring collaboration to ensure a well-functioning system and maximize public investments. Collaborating on infrastructure allows the region’s communities to deliver vital services, resulting in capital cost savings and lower operational costs through economies of scale. It can also benefit municipalities that lack the capacity to independently host an infrastructure project. And capital projects that combine transportation elements with water or wastewater improvements can better leverage limited capital funds. Municipalities in the region often already share infrastructure or collaborate on joint or aggregated projects. One current example is the Cal-Sag Trail, where a group of municipalities along the Cal-Sag Channel collaborated with other public and private partners to construct a 26-mile trail using more than $35 million in federal, state, municipal, and private funds. This approach can work on a smaller scale as well.

Another challenge in delivering capital projects and improving roadway system performance is disruption resulting from construction. Coordination of projects across transportation agencies, water and wastewater infrastructure providers, and utility companies could reduce the frequency and duration of construction on rights of way and potentially decrease costs, reduce driver delays, and improve safety. In addition, schedule delays during road construction projects caused by the presence of utilities can impose significant cost increases. Often utility infrastructure -- including publicly or privately owned communications, electricity, gas, water, or other lines or equipment -- is located in the transportation facility right of way and must be relocated or removed during construction. Coordination with utility companies is important to avoid construction delays.
 

For day-to-day highway operations, effective coordination can reduce the need for costly roadway expansion by making the most efficient use of the existing system. The roadway system is most effectively managed when coordination goes beyond an individual operating agency.  Establishing real-time communication and operational agreements between roadway agencies, emergency management services, transit providers, and traveler information services can improve transportation system safety and reliability, and reduce congestion. 

The following describes strategies and associated actions to implement this recommendation.

Partner with other units of government to deliver infrastructure projects

Transportation agencies should partner with one another as well as with other entities that implement infrastructure projects. Improved coordination can speed up the construction and maintenance of infrastructure, reduce the number of times that roadways must be reconstructed, and improve system reliability. Project coordination could include jointly delivering single infrastructure projects or aggregating infrastructure projects across boundaries to increase cost efficiencies or financing options. This could also simply mean replicating existing efforts like the Chicago Project Coordination Office to coordinate across entities that maintain roadways, water infrastructure, and utilities to reduce the number of times underground improvements must be made.

Improve utility coordination

Greater coordination with utility companies is necessary to reduce delays on transportation project engineering and construction. Construction-related delays in particular can impose significant cost increases for transportation projects. Better data is needed on detailed utility location information, and a database of detailed utility location information in a secure format should be developed by infrastructure owners and housed at IDOT. The City of Chicago is already working to collect this data during construction activities for future project planning. To improve coordination, counties should reinvigorate their utility coordination councils. Moreover, the State of Illinois should consider updating the statutes that govern utility coordination regulations.