With everything from restaurants to shopping centers to the historic square, Business Route 24 is an identity-defining road for Washington.
The city's main east-west commercial corridor starts where Route 8 ends on the western edge of Washington.
Mayor Gary Manier avoids it if he can.
“Even going to and from city hall,” he says, “I’ll take Jefferson Street before I’ll take Business 24 to and from city hall. But it’s sad because not everybody knows it’s a state highway.”

Manier said he hears horror stories from residents of flat tires and bent rims. City staff make direct complaints to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
It's a dynamic Manier said the city has been aware of, and residents have felt, for more than a decade.
“IDOT, I know they have a shortage of employees and they’re struggling a little bit, but, uh, it’s a process. And until they release the money and say it’s a go, we just have to sit and wait,” he said. “So we’re, and Dennis can speak more to this, but the engineering is probably going to take two to three years, if not four.”
Dennis Carr is Washington's city engineer. He said there's a lot of moving pieces to making a project happen, from the lengthy engineering process to hammering out land acquisition arrangements with the dozens of businesses along the route.
“But any landowner that doesn’t want to get rid of their property, or doesn’t want to allow the right-of-way acquisition could definitely hold a project like this up, for the long term,” Carr said.
However, there's little indication a business owner would step in the way of the project. They're no big fans of Business 24's condition themselves.
Just ask Joe Russell, owner of Russell's Cycling and Fitness.

“I don’t even drive that section of the road,” he said. “I operate a business here, I live a mile from here, I don’t use that mile of road. It is messing with the brand of Washington. It is not what we do, it’s not what we’re known for.”
Russell said improvements to the road wouldn't just mean increased business attraction, it would mean a better quality of life for the community.
“But let’s talk about our automobiles, the bang that our tires are wearing, that our vehicles are taking, the recklessness it provides,” he said. "You’ll see people trying to make some kind of a stuntman move with their car in order to avoid the chuck hole, the asphalt that’s humped up, avoid the dip, the crack."
Mayor Manier does acknowledge that IDOT is typically dutiful about getting potholes filled or spray patching done, but he calls these a "band-aid" fix.

“Especially that hot-mix or cold-mix, a lot of that, first good rainfall or a freeze, or a snow event with snow plows going up and down Business 24, a lot of that will get shaken loose and just come right back out,” Manier said.
According to City Hall, Russell isn't alone. Carr said a "handful" of business owners along the corridor have started meeting to discuss improvements they'd like to see whenever an IDOT project does happen.
He won't share which businesses are involved, but said the granular details of what they're talking about include things like pedestrian usage, bike lanes, landscaping and green spacing choices.
“[Businesses] need to be very open with IDOT and their own stakeholders at that point in time on what they’re really needing and what the benefit of that road would be to their clientele,” Carr said.
While the design of a future Business Route 24 could take any number of forms, one thing's for certain: it's going to be expensive.
Manier previously told WCBU $53 million is allocated to a project in the 2019 Rebuild Illinois Capitol Bill. He saids that's an old estimate and there's no real telling what the total price tag would be now with increasing fuel costs, rising employee wages and pricier construction materials.
“It’s going to be a slow process,” Manier said. “So I’m not sure what the end date will be before that road is completely reconstructed.”
WCBU reached out to IDOT to get an update on plans for Business Route 24. IDOT sent a short statement: "Currently, we’re working on an interim project to address some short-term issues to address the deteriorating pavement condition."
Whatever form an interim project takes, and however long it takes to bridge to a longer-term solution, Washington residents like Joe Russell are just waiting to see any movement.
“We’re apathetic, we’re just, ‘You’re kidding me,’” he said. “We’re calloused over. And then we’re fighting mad. All three at once, that’s where we are.”