Circle Interchange May Get $375 Facelift
Big changes may be coming to Chicago’s Circle Interchange.
Considered one of the most congested segments of highway in the nation, this vehicular confluence, where the Dan Ryan, Kennedy and Eisenhower expressways and Congress Parkway meet, sees about 300,000 cars per day.
Because of it’s location and importance to local, regional and national transportation, the Illinois Department of Transportation is considering many ideas on how to increase capacity and therefore reduce the time wasting traffic backups the interchange currently produces.
In fact, IDOT held an information open house on the project last Thursday at the Marriot Hotel on the UIC Campus to show possible solutions as well as week public input for the project. According to the Daily Herald, there are many ideas being proposed–some conventional and some, let’s say out of the box ideas.
Whatever the solution or solutions, it will not be cheap. The current estimate is $375 million just for the construction. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any timeline for the project. That might have something to do with Illinois’ current fiscal health. Not only is the state broke, things are getting worse as Illinois’ credit rating was downgraded again last week. So getting the funding for big project like this might be problematic.
Read the Daily Herald’s full report, “Traffic planners circle around interchange solution.”
If you want more information, the Circle Interchange now has its own website with much more information on data on the project.
Funding should only be an issue if the state has been raiding road funds for other things or they’ve got too many projects in too small a time window.
How many times does this thing get a “facelift” and still it is a pile of crap. Typical M.O. for the Illinois DOT: spend a lot of money and do a project poorly so that you can then justify spending a lot more money to do it almost right. Connected crony contractors and unions make a ton of money, as do the politicians receiving kickbacks (I mean campaign contributions) and the only losers are the driving public who pays a lot in taxes to drive on crap roads.
Another multi-year cluster-f*ck for Illinois and Chicago Departments of Transportation, following on the heels of the catastrophically mismanaged 3-year Eisenhower/Wacker Drive/Congress Parkway project.