Focus on improving local and regional truck travel

Freight has regional and local transportation, land use, and economic impacts. One clear opportunity is to improve truck routing through the region. While state law allows local governments to designate truck routes or determine preferred truck routes, many communities instead designate only where trucks cannot go.^{{{There are three primary classes of truck routes in Illinois: Class I, Class II, and Locally Preferred Truck Routes. Class I and Class II truck routes are associated with certain restrictions on the size and weight of trucks, allowing access to trucks with 53-foot trailers or containers. Class I truck routes generally consist of the expressway system, but also have the effect of permitting truck access to streets within a mile of an expressway interchange (unless otherwise restricted). Class II routes include major state highways as well as local roads that have been designated by local ordinance as a truck route. Finally, Locally Preferred Truck Routes include only truck routes administratively identified by local governments and are not considered a designated truck route; they have no effect on permitted truck size and weight. Illinois also has Class III truck routes, but the legal effect of these has been made mostly moot by recent legislation increasing legal loads to 80,000 pounds (PA 96-0034 and PA 96-0037).}}} Local restrictions based on truck type, weight, and dimensions often change at jurisdictional borders, adding complexity to routes, prompting trucks to make turns and diversions to alternate routes when moving between municipalities. Drivers must individually verify each jurisdiction’s truck restrictions, as these local restrictions are not reported to a centralized public or private database. Although intended to limit noise, wear and tear, and other negative impacts of truck traffic, communities’ restrictions can in fact exacerbate such problems due to inconsistency and lack of coordination.

Working across jurisdictions can help maintain the Chicago region’s national freight stature while mitigating negative impacts and maximizing benefits for communities. Despite our region’s formidable overall freight profile, most activity tends to occur in a relatively small number of locations linked by the region-wide transportation network.^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “Freight Land Use Clusters in Northeastern Illinois,” accessed March 29, 2018, http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/updates/all/-/asset_publisher/UIMfSLnFfMB6/content/freight-land-use-clusters-in-northeastern-illinois.}}} Freight-intensive land uses tend to co-locate for efficiencies of shared infrastructure and workforce.^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “Memorandum: Freight Land Use Topics,” May 16, 2016, https://cmap.illinois.gov/wp-content/uploads/Freight-Committee_freight_land_use.pdf.}}{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “Memorandum: Local Approaches to Freight Planning in Metropolitan Chicago,” December 4, 2017, https://cmap.illinois.gov/wp-content/uploads/Freight-Committee_local-freight-plans_20170918.pdf.}}} Through their collaboration on economic growth initiatives, leaders of the seven counties in northeastern Illinois and the City of Chicago have identified truck permitting as a key opportunity for inter-jurisdictional cooperation. These regional leaders completed the Regional Truck Permitting Study,^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “Regional Truck Permitting Plan,” http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/programs-and-resources/lta/regional-truck-permitting.}}} funded by numerous partners including the counties, City of Chicago, IDOT, and CMAP. Local restrictions represent another opportunity. Oversize and overweight permitting must be complemented by streamlined local routes that support movement of regularly loaded trucks. A recent Local Technical Assistance project in the O’Hare subregion offers one example of working across jurisdictions to create consistent truck routes, limiting truck traffic in residential and sensitive areas while still providing connected and consistent routes.^{{{Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, “O’Hare Subregion Truck Route Plan: Recommendations and Action Plan,” 2017, https://cmap.illinois.gov/wp-content/uploads/Final_CMAP-OHare-Subregion_Task5-Action-Plan_6-29_17_v2.pdf.}}}