While travelers have dealt with construction on Peace Road in west Sycamore this year, the Peace Road widening project could mean construction further north in the future.

DeKalb County Engineer Nathan Schwartz said the next phase of the Peace Road widening project, which would focus on the area from Freed Road to Main Street in Sycamore, likely won’t commence until 2028.

He also said the current construction on Peace Road won’t be completed by the end of the typical construction season.

“We still have another year to go before the section south of Freed Road is complete,” Schwartz said. “The section north of Freed, we are anticipating a couple of years to do all of the surveying, the permitting, the design work.”

That doesn’t mean DeKalb County isn’t spending money on the project, however.

This month, the DeKalb County Board approved a $957,601 contract with Aurora-based engineering firm HR Green for services associated with the Peace Road structures and widening project, according to county documents.

That includes the intersection of Peace and Freed roads, Schwartz said.

“The intersection improvements, and the expected traffic signal at Freed would not be a part of the current project, but a part of this one that we are just starting the design of,” Schwartz said.

The contract authorized during the Sept. 17 DeKalb County Board meeting is for preliminary engineering required to widen Peace Road from two to four lanes from Freed Road to Main Street in Sycamore. That necessitates the replacement of a bridge over Blue Heron Creek and the widening of a structure at the Chief Black Partridge Nature Preserve, according to county documents.

Schwartz said the preliminary engineering also has to consider drainage concerns and the potential need for additional turn lanes at some intersections.

“It’s a pretty broad scope of work,” Schwartz said. “We have multiple intersections. Some intersections already have traffic signals, some intersections we expect will get new traffic signals, such as Freed Road, and some intersections probably are not going to get traffic signals at this time.”

While traffic signal warrants will be studied at each intersection along the project’s path, the intersections of Freed Road, Main Street and Ward Boulevard are expected to get new or updated traffic signals, according to county documents.

Schwartz said fourteen companies bid on the engineering services contract for DeKalb County.

“For the most part, the Peace Road widening would improve traffic flow,” he said. “There are a lot of passenger vehicles, transit vehicles, trucks, using the roadway. The final look of the road would most likely be similar to the rest of Peace Road to the south. Two lanes in each direction plus a center median that separates the two directions of traffic.”

Schwartz said he thinks the project could cost around $8 million, or more in total.

“That is a lot of money, and that’s just what road construction costs, unfortunately,” Schwarz said. “That would actually be a very good price, doing such a large project at one time. If we were to have to piecemeal it and break it up into, say, two different pieces, then the two parts put together likely would be closer to $9 million or even more than that.”