IDOT restructures Division of Highways

Logan County in Region Four      

[NOV. 20, 2004]  SPRINGFIELD -- Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Timothy W. Martin announced Wednesday the reorganization of the senior management structure of the department's Division of Highways. The reorganization, which will take effect Nov. 15, 2005, will retain the current structure of nine districts but will include five regions that will allow the department to maximize technical and personnel strengths and better manage the reduced staffing that has occurred over the past 10 years.

"These revisions will put a greater emphasis than ever before on work out in the field, away from the central office," Martin said. "The district offices will be entirely responsible [for] project scopes, schedule and budgets, as well as day-to-day maintenance, snow removal, and answering questions from the people they serve in their districts."

The central office will focus on providing assistance in technical areas, auditing of processes at the regional and district levels, ensuring quality in all areas of the division, and, most importantly, performing safety audits and improving the focus on safety throughout the department.

"It's important to realize that the department is entering a new era, based on a smaller agency," Martin said. "This new organization will continue to be accountable to the communities we serve on the district level, and we will be more responsive to safety, economic impacts and an improved level of service with more flexibility."

In order to strengthen the organization, the following changes are being made to the upper management structure within the Division of Highways. The nine districts will remain with separate budgets, with some of the district boundaries being redrawn. Each district will have a district chief engineer, an operations-maintenance manager and an administrative manager. These positions will report to a deputy director-regional engineer, who in turn reports to the director of highways-chief engineer, Victor A. Modeer, P.E. In addition, Eric Harm will remain as deputy director-assistant chief engineer, and Priscilla Tobias will become the state safety engineer.

The new regional boundaries are organized along demographic lines that predominantly follow the east-to-west interstate routes.

• Region One -- Region One Engineer Diane O'Keefe, P.E. Encompasses the former District One. This region includes Chicago and the collar counties.
• Region Two -- Region Two Engineer Gregory Mounts, P.E. Encompasses Districts Two and Three. This region includes Rockford, the Quad Cities, the La Salle-Peru-Ottawa areas and the Kankakee metropolitan area.
• Region Three -- Region Three Engineer Joseph Crowe, P.E. Encompasses Districts Four and Five. This region includes Galesburg, Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign-Urbana and Danville.
• Region Four -- Region Four Engineer Christine Reed, P.E. Encompasses Districts Six and Seven. This includes Quincy, Jacksonville, Springfield, Decatur, Mattoon-Charleston area and Effingham. Also included is the Interstate 70 corridor from Vandalia to the Indiana state line.
• Region Five -- Region Five Engineer Mary Lamie, P.E. Encompasses Districts Eight and Nine. This includes the Metro East St. Louis region, Mount Vernon, Marion and Carbondale. Region Five includes the entire Interstate 64 corridor.

A map depicting the revised boundaries is available at www.dot.il.gov. [To download the Adobe Acrobat Reader for the map, click here.]

[Illinois Department of Transportation news release]