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.

Pony May Reopen

The liquor license for The Pony Cabaret and Steakhouse comes up for renewal for 2016-2017 today. Also on the agenda is a formalized definition of what is meant by "topless" and "bottomless". It appears they may have used an "or" in the original ordinance when they meant to write "and".

Southern Illinois Wineries

The Southern Illinois Wine Trail gets top billing in this article in the current Midwest Traveler magazine.

Hwy 127 Expansion

According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, the roadwork on Highway 127 north of Murphysboro is not a precursor to an expansion of the road to 4 lanes but rather a more efficient way of replacing the bridge crossing the Big Muddy River at that point. It is easier and more efficient to build the replacement bridge separately, then move the traffic from the old bridge to the new.

At approximately 5000 cars per day, north Highway 127 does not have enough traffic to justify a 4 lane expansion to Interstate 64. While such an expansion would probably generate more traffic along the route, the Department does not have the money available to invest in such development when there is other, more pressing work, such as along Hwy 13, to complete.

DE Weekly

According to my ad rep for the SIUC Daily Egyptian, starting this semester, the paper, which published online only over the summer, will move to a once a week print publishing schedule. New issues will appear once a week on Wednesday. She also indicated they were wooing bars and liquor stores, which abandoned the DE en masse a decade ago after a few stories the paper ran on bar overcrowding. Prior to that, bars were among the largest DE advertisers but over the years that money has moved to Thomas Publishing and the Carbondale Nightlife.

IHOP Complex

Had an inquiry about the building going up behind the International House of Pancakes building. From what I understand, it is additional retail space the developer expects to rent out based upon traffic drawn to the site by the new IHOP.

New Website Look

The Carbondale city website has a new look with translation capability and the option to sign up for a city newsletter.