CIRA gets federal grant to upgrade service road

Posted on September 16, 2015

By Eric Stock

BLOOMINGTON – A service road at Central Illinois Regional Airport will be getting some upgrades, thanks to a federal grant.

Airport director Carl Olson told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin the road that connects all ramp service and service vehicles to the main part of the airport has been through a ton of wear and tear in the 14 years since it was built.

“It’s a road that’s used constantly 24 hours a day,” Olson said. “It’s fire trucks, snow plows fuel trucks, airline equipment. It’s anything people see moving around in the airfield that we simply don’t want near the airplanes.”

CIRA is getting a near $1.2 million grant announced by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to rebuild the road which is inside the fenced-in area at the airport.

“One of the things that’s different from when the road was built is we’ve got them 70-thousand pound trucks driving on it with a single axle and it just beats that road down into gravel,” Olson said.

He added the project is scheduled to begin later this year and be done by late spring, early summer next year.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].

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