There's a new push to open the way for building of a Crosstown Tollway in Chicago. House speaker Michael Madigan (Dem Chicago) says the project needs to be revived. Yesterday he called it "a missing link" that is needed to relieve congestion throughout the city.

City of Chicago Mayor Richard Daly supports the project also though in a more limited form.

The project is L-plan, going west from near the western end of the Chicago Skyway at the Dan Ryan Expressway westward under 75th Street 10km (6 miles) to Cicero Avenue. Then it would go north 26km (16 miles) along the Cicero Av (IL50) corridor ending at the Edens Expressway (I-94)/Kennedy Expressway (I--80/94) interchange, forming something of a belt route about 9km (5.5mi) west of the Loop downtown.

Madigan says the project will have to be financed with tolls and proposes having the Illinois Tollway study it and take it on as a project. He has introduced a joint House resolution on the project (see below).

Old idea

The project is an old one that has been started, stopped, let lay, and revived in different forms. In its original form it was part of the visionary Daniel Burnham's "The Plan of Chicago" in 1909. Burnham lived from 1846 to 1912 and is credited with much of the planning of Chicago and the development of its skyscrapers, boulevards, parks and lakefront.

The route of the Crosstown follows railroad rights of way over almost all its distance and goes by a mix of railyards, businesses, warehousing, light industry with some housing too. The project was designed in the 1960s and 1970s as an all-vehicles expressway and some of the land acquired during the time of Mayor Richard J Daley father of the present mayor Richard M.

Construction was close to being started on the project as a free road in the late 1970s. It was even given an interstate designation - I-494 - and approved for federal funding. Then it was blocked - a good road is never killed, just kept down for a while - by a combination of rapid inflation of costs and financing problems plus protests and demands for money to go to rail transit. In the late 1970s different governors traded away the $2b of federal funding for I-494 for rail transit projects including the Blue Line extension to O'Hare Airport and the Orange Line to Midway Airport.

A spokesman for the House Speaker said yesterday: "What we're trying to accomplish is the building of a road that would make massive improvements in traffic congestion throughout the Chicago metropolitan area."

The road would serve the Midway Airport, a growing inner area alternative to O'Hare, and the Cicero Av corridor which is quite remote from any expressway.

And it would connect six interstates going from the southeast anti-clockwise:

Chicago Skyway (I-90)

Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94)

Stevenson Exwy (I-55)

Eisenhower Exwy (I-290)

Kennedy Exwy (I-90)

Edens Ewxy (I-94)

The route would also serve to take some through traffic out of the complex of interchanges close by the Loop or downtown Chicago.

Terrific for Skyway

The project would be terrific for the Chicago Skyway since it would strengthen that axis between the westside and southside of Chicago and the southeast as compared to the Borman/Kingery/Tristate Tollway axis further out from the city. The Skyway has spare capacity at 2x3 lanes and has an obvious synergy with a Crosstown Tollway.

Being competitive with the Tristate it remains to be seen how enthusiastic the Illinois Tollway people will be about the project.

The Crosstown route is entirely within the boundaries of the City of Chicago and the project may evoke City versus Cook County rivalry. The Tollway is entirely outside the City boundaries.

Daly favors more specialized bus-truckway

Since 2001 Mayor Richard M Daley has been sponsoring studies of the project as a 'transitway' to serve some combination of buses, vans and trucks. Daley wants it completed before the 2016 Olympics, which the city is trying to get.

The Daly transitway concept is likely to be easier to gain support for because it would have lesser neighborhood impacts and would be smaller and less expensive to build. Traffic would probably justify Madigan's idea of reviving it as an all-vehicles toll expressway.

In either case it would probably have to be depressed in trench over its whole length, perhaps lidded over in many places to be fully undergrounded. There may be some compromise in allowed traffic whereby preference is given to buses and trucks and any surplus capacity sold at high toll rates to car drivers - the Dublin Port Tunnel concept.

Full text of the Speaker's resolution

HJ0018 LRB095 10754 RCE 30996 r

1 HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

2 WHEREAS, Section 14.1 of the Toll Highway Act provides that

3 prior to the issuance of bonds for or the commencement of

4 construction of any new toll highway, that particular toll

5 highway shall be authorized by joint resolution of the General

6 Assembly; and

7 WHEREAS, The General Assembly finds that it is in the best

8 interests of the People of the State of Illinois to expand the

9 Illinois toll highway system; therefore, be it

10 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE

11 NINETY-FIFTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE

12 SENATE CONCURRING HEREIN, that the Illinois State Toll Highway

13 Authority be authorized to expand the Illinois toll highway

14 system to include a Crosstown Expressway, with the Expressway

15 to be constructed generally along railroad right-of-way in the

16 Cicero Avenue corridor from near the Kennedy/Edens Expressway

17 junction south to approximately 75th Street, and then,

18 following railroad rights-of-way, east to the Dan Ryan

19 Expressway; and that every possible effort be made to use

20 railroad right-of-way and minimize the disruption of all

21 residential areas; and be it further

22 RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be delivered to

23 the directors of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-02-21