It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for motorists using the Tri-State Tollway.
The traffic-clogging two-year reconstruction and widening of the central Tri-State was no sooner finished than the tollway authority disclosed plans Thursday to redo the north and south ends of the road next year.
Directors of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority voted Thursday to approve eight engineering contracts totaling $2.9 million to draw up plans to resurface 47 miles of the highway.
The Tri-State (Interstate Highway 294) would be repaved from 95th Street south to the Calumet Expressway, from the Northwest Tollway north to the Edens spur and from Illinois Highway 60 north to U.S. Highway 41 just south of the Wisconsin state line.
Work is to begin next spring and plans call for it to be completed by Labor Day, 1994.
The tollway board moved forward on new toll roads, letting a $699,729 survey contract for a proposed south extension of the North-South Tollway (I-355) from I-55 in Bolingbrook to I-80 in New Lenox.
Construction of the 12.5-mile, $525 million toll road could begin as early as 1995, with the highway opening two years later, according to Ken Desmaretz, chief engineer of the tollway authority.
The Tri-State repaving would cost an estimated $48 million to $50 million and would follow the completion this fall of a project to rebuild and widen to eight lanes from six the central Tri-State from 95th Street to the Northwest Tollway.
Desmaretz said the authority would try to keep three lanes open in each direction.
