Illinois’ 5-year tollway project under budget and ahead of schedule
Posted by Arjun ThomasAs reported on the Chicago Tribune.
After years of weaving around concrete barriers, navigating tricky lane changes and slowing for 45 mph work zones on Illinois toll roads, construction-weary motorists finally have clear sailing in sight.
Just in time for winter, the Illinois tollway authority said that this month it will wrap up most of a five-year program to rebuild roads and interchanges and widen toll roads.
“We’re driving toward the finish line,” chief engineer Paul Kovacs recently told Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board members.
At a cost of $6.1 billion, the massive Congestion-Relief Program is running about $200 million under budget, tollway officials say. Raising skeptics’ eyebrows even further, officials say the work is ahead of schedule. Some portions that weren’t expected to be done until spring are complete.
“Is it better? Oh yes, without a doubt,” said Bob Puerling, 70, who uses the tollway almost daily, driving vehicles for a dealership in West Bend, Wis. “It’s four lanes. … It’s nice.”
Officials still face the challenge of making sure enough toll-paying motorists use the 286-mile system to pay off a debt load that will soon hit $4 billion and isn’t scheduled to disappear until at least 2034.
That’s almost ten times the cost of building the original 187-mile, four-lane system, parts of which opened in 1958.
Tollway directors approved the sweeping effort to rebuild and widen the system in September 2004. The plan was to replace nearly 50-year-old concrete, reduce congestion by adding lanes and convert manned toll plazas into nonstop open-road tolling with I-PASS.
A key component was extending I-355, now the Veterans Memorial Tollway, more than 12 miles south from I-55 in Bolingbrook to I-80 in New Lenox. That road opened in 2007.
The tollway has awarded more than $4.5 billion in contracts for construction, design and inspection work. The program will open four lanes each way on most of the Tri-State (I-294), the Reagan (I-88) and Jane Addams (I-90) tollways.
What’s left for 2010 are the resurfacing and rehabbing of the Edens Expressway spur; resurfacing on the Veterans from the Reagan to Army Trail Road; and resurfacing the Addams from the Tri-State to the Elgin Toll Plaza.
The extra lanes, the new Veterans and open-road tolling are expected to result in more toll-paying drivers, officials say. Toll revenues pay for about half the $6.1 billion program cost, with the other $3.5 billion financed from the sale of bonds.
Read the entire story here.
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