McHenry County's Five-Year Road Plan: What It Holds for the Marengo Area

McHenry County has posted its draft road and bridge plan for the next five years, and for the next few weeks anyone can weigh in on it. The county's Division of Transportation is taking comments on any project in the plan through Tuesday, October 27, ahead of presenting it to the County Board's Transportation Committee on October 28.

The plan is a list of 101 projects in a web database most people will never open. Marengo Weekly went through every project record, pulled out the ones around Marengo, and added up what the county proposes to spend.

What the Plan Is

The five-year program is the county's schedule for its own roads and bridges: the county highways, county bridges, and a handful of township bridges it manages. It does not cover Route 23 or Route 20, which belong to the state, or city streets like the ones in Marengo's 2026 street plan.

Each project gets a funding table broken out by year, phase, and source. Across all 101 projects, the draft schedules about $286 million over 2027 through 2031, by Marengo Weekly's count of those tables. Using the county's own project categories, the largest shares go to safety projects (about $65 million), bridge replacements (about $54 million), and pavement preservation, mostly resurfacing (about $40 million).

The money comes mostly from three places: the RTA sales tax, the state motor fuel tax, and a county-level motor fuel tax.

The Plan Moves Every Year

The program is rewritten annually, so it works more like a forecast than a contract. Each version shows the county's current intentions, and projects can move earlier or later when the next one comes out.

That is visible around Marengo already. Comparing this draft to last year's program:

• Marengo Road bridge (Coral Township) had construction set for 2027 last year. This draft funds it in 2028, though the project's own description still says construction is anticipated in 2027.
• Maple Street culvert had only engineering money last year, with construction described as "after 2030." This draft funds $1.5 million of construction in 2027.
• Maple Street at Coral Road had its design work funded in 2026 last year. In this draft it is funded in 2027. Construction stays in 2029.
• Harmony Road bridge over Coon Creek (Riley Township), the replacement of a 1980 bridge listed at $4.9 million last year with construction in 2027, does not appear in this draft at all. It moved up, not out. "Harmony Road is moving forward early," said Drew Duffin, the Division of Transportation's transportation planning manager. On September 15 the County Board appropriated the county's $2.4 million share of construction from its 2026 budget, and approved an agreement with the state that puts construction at $5.2 million, up to $2.8 million of it committed through the Illinois Department of Transportation's Local Bridge Formula Program. The county's paperwork schedules the project for a November 6 bid letting. Because that money was set aside before 2027, the project was not carried into the new plan, Duffin wrote.

That is a reason to read the dates as estimates, and a reason not to read a missing project as a cancelled one.

What Is Proposed Around Marengo

By our count, the draft schedules about $15.3 million for seven projects in and around Marengo over the five years.

Maple Street at Coral Road, $6.3 million in this plan. The biggest local item is a safety project at Maple Street and Coral Road, south of town in Riley Township. The county named it one of the first three intersections in its new Intersection Safety Initiative after, in its words, taking "a close look at crash data and traffic patterns." The plan funds $600,000 of design in 2027, $200,000 for land in 2028, and $5.5 million for construction and construction engineering in 2029. Counting $533,000 already spent on preliminary engineering, the county's total for the project is about $6.8 million. No design has been chosen. The project is in preliminary engineering and "no preferred alternative has been selected yet," Duffin told Marengo Weekly. No public meeting or comment period is scheduled. The county typically holds a public meeting once design is underway, according to Duffin, and it has not yet appropriated money for design.

Separately, the intersection was the scene of a serious crash earlier this month. On Thursday, October 1, a two-vehicle crash there left both drivers with critical injuries, according to the Marengo Fire and Rescue Districts. The release did not give a cause, and the crash is under investigation by the McHenry County Sheriff's Office. It was not the first serious crash there. In June 2022, a passenger died after two pickup trucks collided at the intersection, according to the Sheriff's Office. The safety project predates this month's crash: it was in last year's plan too.

Harmony Road resurfacing, $3.65 million, 2028. Two projects together cover Harmony Road from the Boone County line to Route 20. The west segment, from the county line to Carls Road, is $2.4 million. The east segment, from Carls Road to Route 20, is $1.25 million and is the one project in the plan that lists the City of Marengo among the places it touches.

Marengo Road bridge, $3.3 million, 2028. This replaces a 1995 bridge over a tributary of the West Branch of Union Creek in Coral Township. The county rated its deck and superstructure 5 out of 10 in 2024. Engineering and land costs, about $790,000, have already been spent.

Maple Street culvert, $1.5 million, 2027. This repairs or replaces a culvert along Maple Street built in 1945 and rated 4 out of 10 in 2024.

Genoa Road and Hampshire Road resurfacing, $570,000, 2028. Genoa Road ($320,000) and Hampshire Road ($250,000) would each be resurfaced from Harmony Road south to the Kane County line.

How to Weigh In

Every project in the plan has its own page with a link to comment on it. You can browse the full plan, search by project, and see the map at mcdot.ecointeractive.com. Comments and questions can also go by email to mcdot@mchenrycountyil.gov. The county says it will review comments through October 27, the day before the plan goes to the Transportation Committee.

Marengo Weekly reviewed the project records and funding tables in McHenry County's draft FY2027-2031 and current FY2026-2030 five-year transportation programs (retrieved October 2, 2026), the county's published FY2026-2030 program document, the Division of Transportation's announcement of the comment period, the county's Intersection Safety Initiative page, the County Board's September 15, 2026, Harmony Road bridge resolution, the Marengo Fire and Rescue Districts' release on the October 1 crash, and the McHenry County Sheriff's Office release of June 13, 2022, and asked the Division of Transportation about the Harmony Road bridge and the Maple Street and Coral Road project, for this article.