The three-year, $169 million rehabilitation of the Kennedy Expressway was completed Friday — a month ahead of a Thanksgiving deadline — with the opening of ramps at Ontario Street and the Wilson Avenue exit, state officials announced.
The final phase of the project involved refurbishing outbound lanes heading from downtown Chicago toward O’Hare International Airport. The project began in 2023 with work on the inbound lanes, and reversible express lanes saw upgrades in 2024 that went past its deadline and into January of this year.
Overall, the project involved replacing 7½ miles of deteriorated pavement between Ohio Street and the Edens Expressway, including two dozen entrance and exit ramps. It also included pavement and structural repairs on 36 bridges, new signage and lighting, and modernizing the gates that control traffic in the express lanes, state officials said.
Gov. JB Pritzker and other officials said during a news conference that completion of the project should make commutes and other trips shorter and safer on a road that carries 275,000 cars per day.
“At a time of historic division in our politics, there is one idea that we can all rally around, and that’s traffic sucks,” Pritzker said at the news conference, which was held at an Illinois Department of Transportation landscape yard just off that expressway in the city’s West Town community area. “But these improvements were vital to make, and it was an investment in our future.”
While the project finished a bit ahead of schedule, it also was about 13% over budget, with the original cost projected at $150 million, according to IDOT.
State transportation officials blamed delays in the project’s second phase on technical issues with the 120 gates that needed to be installed to control traffic direction in the reversible express lanes.
Illinois Transportation Secretary Gia Biagi said the project was a major rehabilitation for an expressway that’s more than half a century old. Biagi noted the expressway was named for President John F. Kennedy because it was built around the time of his presidency.
“That is how old that we are talking in terms of the piece of infrastructure,” she said.
Originally called the Northwest Expressway, it was renamed a few years later following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
While the major rehabilitation of the Kennedy is complete, drivers will still encounter lane closures through next summer for work on the Ohio Street and Ontario Street feeder ramps, both of which are part of a separate project. Two lanes will remain open in each direction between Orleans Street and the Kennedy until the work is finished, according to IDOT.
Drivers on the Kennedy also still may see some lane closures during nights, weekends and off-peak hours to allow for completion of lane striping and sign installation, state officials said.
The larger Kennedy rehabilitation project is part of the bipartisan Rebuild Illinois capital construction plan that Pritzker signed into law in 2019, his first year in office. It was funded in part by doubling the state’s gas tax and tying future increases to the rate of inflation.
As of earlier this month, the state had completed approximately $20.8 billion of improvements statewide on 21,309 lane miles of highway, 815 bridges and 1,181 additional safety improvements through Rebuild Illinois, approved as a six-year, $45 billion program to rebuild transportation infrastructure as well as public buildings and other facilities across the state.
