Rerouting Trucks

One of the complaints about the current traffic situation is the number of heavy duty trucks that come through downtown heading north or south on Highway 51. Unfortunately, there is no other currently available option to re-route them anywhere else. IDOT has control over the state highways 13 and 51 that run through the downtown part of Carbondale but to shunt trucks onto a different route through the town would require running them over city streets instead of IDOT maintained ones. The most feasible re-routing would run along Pleasant Hill Road to Giant City Road, then north on Giant City to Highway 13 and then take 13 west until it intersects with 51 again. The turns to get onto the various road are handleable by a smaller vehicle but trying to get an 18 wheel truck onto any of them is just asking for traffic jams and accidents. Like it or not, the current street design is the best for the forseeable future, until the state finishes the 6 lane expansion of Highway 13.