robinson road access illinois river

[nathan richard]

yesterday i saw that the access on the south side of the robinson road bridge has been blocked off. there's a heavy duty highway guard rail and "No Tresspassing" is painted all over the trees.

anyone know anything about this???

[Half Ton]

I know that bridge was on a list for inspection and closure or rePair. It could be that the time has come for one or the other. I'd say that the wc or bc road dEpartment or landowner is trying to keeP away thieves, litterbugs, or other undesirables.

A call to the wc or bc road dept should provide an answer.

[Half Ton]

Well it turns out that the Washington County Road Dept. only has a ditch to ditch or fence to fence right of way on Robinson Springs Road.

Which is different from a 30 foot right of way on many other county roads.

I spoke with the road dept individual responsible for county road maintenance and he said that the bridge is not being closed or worked on.

This means that the adjacent landowner is tired of trash, parties, hoodlums and etc. and that all other friendly and responsible user groups have lost out for now as the south put-in is shut off.

However, the landowner can not have his guard rail or barbed wire fence connecting to the bridge.

I normally have parked on the north side access area, and even that is not in a county right of way. So it too, could potentially be shut down in the future.

[Regud]

Thanks for looking into this John. Did the county say why they only had a ditch to ditch right of way?

[Half Ton]

No prob, Ryan and Nathan.

Yeah, they said that when some easements were aquired for roads, especially the older ones in the county, that they did not have rules on the books or money to aquire the larger easements.

Property rights and the hornets nest that can be stirred by the appearance of "taking" by the government was probably a part of that too.

Heck, these days people are more used to having land taken from them by the gvmt (or bought for a less than market price) that the fight against these uniform codes for roads and such is not that strong...for the most part.