A retired Rockford resident who bikes about 45 miles a day most of the year is asking area officials to do something about a problematic flood-prone underpass beneath Forest Hills Road along the Willow Creek Path.
The 2.6-mile path connects Harlem High School near North Alpine Road to Pierce Lake at Rock Cut State Park. At Forest Hills Road on the border between Loves Park and Machesney Park the path forks — one fork goes beneath the road via an "underpass" and the other path crosses the street.
Ray Streit, a retired software controls programmer, says riding beneath the road is safer than crossing a 45 mph stretch of Forest Hills Road. But he said the underpass is almost always flooded.
In three years of taking the path, Streit said it was flooded or buried in mud on all but three or four occasions.
"That path is the main path out to Rock Cut State Park from Machesney Park and Loves Park and actually from Rockford, too," Streit said. "So, it's pretty highly used. The underpass is a better way to get across there, but it's always flooded."
Streit blames what he calls a rock dam downstream from the underpass for the flooding. He established a change.org petition that argues allowing the path to flood forces families to cross the road, posing a "serious safety issue."
He is asking officials to remove the impediment in the creek and install "pedestrian activated flashing crossing lights" on Forest Hills Road.
But what Streit calls an underpass, Loves Park Mayor Greg Jury said is actually a culvert.
Jury said the poorly designed "underpass" has never functioned properly as a pathway since it was built about 30 years ago. Jury said it was added only as an afterthought. Jury also said engineers who work for the city found that there is no way that a rock dam is the cause of the flooding.
He said the culvert was simply never meant to serve as a bike path.
"It's not going to change," Jury said. "He's convinced if you take a few rocks out of a creek downstream or upstream, it won't flood anymore. ... Well, it's going to flood all the time, and it has."
Jury said there is already a flashing yellow light warning motorists to slow down and stop for pedestrians and bicyclists crossing Forest Hills Road. Although he can't recall an accident there, Jury said public works officials recently installed signs to help pedestrians and bicyclists cross the street.
"It's just poorly designed, and it shouldn't be there," Jury said. "Ninety-nine percent of the people go up and go to the road, stop, there's flashing lights for cars, they slow down and they cross. The cars see that the lights are flashing yellow to tell them to slow down because of a bike path."
