The Illinois Department of Transportation collected residents’ input Tuesday on the need to improve access to Interstate 57 in eastern Will County.

Community members gathered in Peotone for the second of four planned public meetings.

IDOT officials were on hand to explain the status of the I-57 Access Study, a preliminary engineering and environmental study looking at the area bounded by Wilmington-Peotone Road (south), Manhattan-Monee Road (north), U.S. Route 45 (west) and 1 mile east of Illinois Route 50 (east).

The villages of Peotone, Monee and University Park are included in the study area.

“We’re starting off at a pretty broad level, looking at all of the needs in the area,” said Steven Schilke, IDOT’s bureau chief of programming.

Part of the study’s purpose is to accommodate projected transportation demands along the I-57 corridor between Monee and Peotone.

The population of Monee grew by 74.6% between 2000 and 2023, while the population of Peotone grew by 31.8%, according to IDOT.

IDOT also is preparing for expected growth and development in Will County, specifically in freight and logistics, and the expected development of the south suburban airport.

The University Park/Monee logistics freight cluster is expected to produce 10,541 jobs by 2026, up from 5,336 jobs in 2014.

Additionally, I-57 freight tonnage is expected to increase by 69.5% from 39.9 million tons in 2022 to 67.7 million tons in 2050, according to IDOT.

Schilke said that IDOT still is planning phase one, the preliminary engineering phase, of its three-phase process.

The current phase, where needs are identified and alternatives are developed to address those needs, began in summer 2024 and is scheduled through spring 2028.

A community advisory group gathered in February and July as part of the process, with three future meetings scheduled.

The purpose of Tuesday’s public meeting was to gather feedback on the needs in the area and take suggestions for alternatives.

IDOT did not have any alternatives to present at the meeting. The alternatives will be presented at the next public meeting, set to take place in early 2026.

From there, IDOT will whittle down the alternatives to find the preferred option.

This might involve modifications to the existing interchanges or a new interchange. A no-build option also will be considered, which assumes only regular road maintenance.

“We first have to identify why we’re there [and] what are the needs of the area before we actually start developing alternatives,” Schilke said.

Steve Malone and Dave Piper, chief and deputy chief of the Manhattan Fire Department, said they attended the meeting to provide data and ensure the perspective of local authorities is considered.

“We want to see what the future plan is so we can make sure that we’re part of the solution that eliminates, obviously, a lot of the accidents that are occurring,” Malone said.

Being involved early in the process is going to be key, he said.

“We’d like to see improvements along Wilmington Road, at least in our district, as well as County Line Road and Route 50,” Malone said. “Those are our two problem areas.”

Piper said the department wants to provide input to ultimately prevent future traffic accidents, make roads safer and improve its response time to emergency incidents.

Lynn Temme of Peotone said it seemed to her that IDOT is concentrating on the wrong things.

“We have some intersections like County Line Road and Route 50 that have more fatalities than [Interstate] 57 does,” she said.

Temme said problems on existing roads should be addressed before another ramp to I-57 is considered.

“They should be concentrating on the problems that are within instead of creating new ones, as far as I’m concerned,” Temme said.