With Congress still hashing out a multiyear transportation bill and Illinois FIRST funds in their final days, motorists may get a slight break this summer as the state’s transportation agencies move forward with modest road programs.
To be sure, a milelong section of the Stevenson Expressway will be widened, and motorists on the East-West Tollway will encounter lane closures because of a nearly five-mile reconstruction project in DuPage County, but overall the construction season looks to be more merciful than in the past.
“Our program is not quite as strong as we have had in the past couple of years,” Dirk Fuqua, an engineer with the Illinois Department of Transportation, said Tuesday.
State officials attributed the lean program, in part, to the expiration of Illinois FIRST funds, a five-year program that ends this year. Those dollars helped boost the statewide highway-improvement program budget to $2.3 billion in each of the past three fiscal years, compared with $1.7 billion currently, according to Steve Coffinbargar, a programming official in Transportation Department.
A multiyear federal transportation bill that could help fund future big-ticket items has yet to be passed by Congress.
Meantime, transportation agencies will spend this construction season finishing some projects, like the pedestrian elements of the South Lake Shore Drive project, and starting on multiyear endeavors like the reconstruction of the Interstate Highway 80/294 and the Dan Ryan Expressway. The main work on those projects will start in 2005 and 2006, respectively.
Elevated-train riders also will see construction projects. The Chicago Transit Authority will begin a multiyear project to renovate 18 stations, among other things, on the Brown Line and begin rehabilitating the Dan Ryan leg of the Red Line, which could cause temporary lane closures on the Dan Ryan Expressway. It intends to finish rehabilitating the Cermak Branch of the Blue Line within the year.
A project that could have one of the greatest impacts on motorists is widening of the Stevenson, which will add a lane in each direction from Weber Road to Naperville Road. Due to start in April and end in August, the project will shift traffic for construction, but two lanes in each direction should remain open, with the exception of some nighttime single-lane closures.
The Transportation Department also will finish some major arterial-road projects, like reconstructing U.S. Highway 20 from the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway to East Bartlett Road. It also will complete work on Illinois Highway 64 between Illinois Highway 53 and Addison Road that includes building two frontage roads and left-turn lanes. It intends to finish repaving Illinois Highway 120 in McHenry in October and will reconstruct Illinois-U.S. Highway 12/20/45 from Archer Avenue to the Calumet Sag Channel from March to October.
Meanwhile, the toll authority will start a two-year repaving project on the East-West Tollway between Naperville Road and Illinois Highway 59 this spring. The project, which should end in summer 2005, will create daily temporary lane closures but three lanes of traffic in each direction will be open during peak travel times.
The agency also will continue to rebuild and widen the Cal-Sag Bridge on the Tri-State Tollway and add more I-PASS only lanes on the Tri-State, Northwest and East-West Tollways.
The Chicago Department of Transportation will complete five new underpasses and a new boardwalk at the 57th Street Beach as the final part of its South Lake Shore Drive project. Motorists will experience some temporary lane closures.
