Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Illiana Tollway

The Illiana Expressway Will Eat Itself

By Phineas Baxandall and Jeff Inglis | Oct 1, 2014 | No Comments

The Illiana Expressway fails on all measures — expected revenue, projected traffic — when looked at realistically. Unfortunately, Illinois and Indiana don’t look at it that way. Image: Parsons Brinckerhoff A recent report by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group, “Highway Boondoggles: Wasted Money and America’s Transportation Future,” examines 11 of the most wasteful, least […]

Revolt Against Illiana Undeterred By IDOT’s Latest Scare Tactic

By Steven Vance | Sep 29, 2014 | 12 Comments

Local advocates are scoffing at the suggestion, made by an Illinois Department of Transportation representative last week, that striking the Illiana Tollway from the Chicago region’s long-term regional plan would jeopardize transportation spending across the entire region. Instead, advocates insist that deleting the costly, sprawl-inducing road would cause at most a brief procedural delay in other […]

CMAP Board Members Will Try to Boot Illiana Boondoggle From Regional Plan

By Steven Vance | Sep 18, 2014 | 11 Comments

After appointees loyal to Governor Pat Quinn muscled the Illiana tollway onto the project list for Chicagoland’s regional plan, it looked like nothing could stop this risky highway boondoggle from getting funded and built. The Illiana may still happen, but not without a fight. Last week, the board of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning […]

Preckwinkle, Environmental Groups Want CMAP to Drop Illiana

By Steven Vance | Sep 9, 2014 | 25 Comments

The Sierra Club and other organizations intend to petition the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to remove the Illiana Tollway from its regional plan, effectively disallowing the state from building the new highway. The deletion is possible because CMAP, the federally-designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for this region, is finalizing a mandatory update of its GO […]

The Metra-Politan Perimeter Ride: Pedaling to Every Metra Line Endpoint

By John Greenfield | Aug 20, 2014 | 12 Comments

[This article also appeared as a cover story in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] I confess that I’m obsessed with pedaling the perimeters of things. For years, I led the Chicago Perimeter Ride, a hundred-mile bicycle tour of the rim of the city, stopping to admire goofy commercial architecture landmarks, from […]

CMAP Plan Update Includes Sobering Look at Region’s Funding Shortfall

By Steven Vance | Jun 17, 2014 | 2 Comments

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s GO TO 2040 regional comprehensive plan has weathered some major ups and downs in its four-year lifespan. CMAP has received several awards for the plan, which required a huge effort on their part to reach out to local residents and overwrite decades of uncoordinated transportation “plans.” Last year, though, the […]

Quinn Tying State’s Hands to Preempt Potential Illiana Roadblocks

By Steven Vance | May 14, 2014 | 10 Comments

Governor Pat Quinn is doing everything he can to ensure that the Illiana Tollway will be built, no matter what. The Illinois General Assembly gave the state permission in 2010 to pursue a public-private partnership with a private company to build and operate the tollway, but now Quinn has proposed new legislation that gives the […]

Illiana Boondoggle Now Guaranteed to Cost Taxpayers At Least $250 Million

By Shaun Jacobsen | May 7, 2014 | 16 Comments

Remember the “innovative” public-private partnership Governor Quinn lauded as a way to build the “21st century” Illiana Expressway, without shifting the entire cost onto the general public? Or remember CMAP’s statement opposing the project, based on its contradictory growth projections, overestimated benefit to the region, and severe financial risk, and the multiple op-eds and articles that followed, all expressing concern about the expressway’s ability to […]

Environmental Groups Charge Illiana Illegally Bypassed CMAP

By Shaun Jacobsen | Apr 25, 2014 | 3 Comments

The Illiana Expressway encountered a potential roadblock in the form of a lawsuit filed last Thursday. Three environmental groups filed the lawsuit: the Environmental Law & Policy Center, representing Openlands and the Sierra Club. The lawsuit [PDF] alleges that IDOT circumvented the proper approval process to get the tollway past a crucial review. On October […]

What Good Chicagoland Regional Planning Looks Like

By Steven Vance | Mar 6, 2014 | 9 Comments

By now, Streetsblog readers know all about how the Illiana Tollway, a proposed highway that will see little use and cost taxpayers $500 million, has messed up our regional plan. Last October, the MPO Policy Committee of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning voted to add the Illiana to the GO TO 2040 plan, allowing […]

The Only Problem the Illiana Solves Is a Political One

By Steven Vance | Mar 4, 2014 | No Comments

The Illiana Tollway is a solution in search of a problem, and the Illinois DOT’s final document in preparation to receive federal approval to build the tollway is a case study in backwards transportation planning. IDOT’s playbook went like this: Design a new road, have consultants review traffic patterns on existing roads to find issues to underpin […]

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