Will Elgin O'Hare actually reach O'Hare? Talks start anew next week
Suburban drivers have waited for decades for a route to bypass the clogged Northwest Tollway and extend the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway.
Now they have another decade or so to ponder how those routes might help their commute, under a plan released by state transportation officials.
The additional years of delay on two major road expansion projects has confounded some transportation experts and riled at least one key suburban supporter.
"I would definitely say it is taking too long," said DuPage County Chairman Bob Schillerstrom, who added that he has not yet seen all of the plans. "Obviously it is an important project for the region and one that has to be expedited as quickly as possible."
But state transportation officials say they are not putting the projects on the fast track because they want to do it right and include as much public input as possible -- as much as five years of it.
"This is a new approach," said Pete Harmet, an area programming bureau chief for the Illinois Department of Transportation. "It is looking at things from a broader perspective."
State planners will review both road and transit options for the triangle-shaped area enclosed by I-290, the Northwest Tollway (I-90) and the Tri-State Tollway (I-294).
Top on the list is the long-sought O'Hare bypass linking I-90 with I-294 and the western extension of the Elgin-O'Hare expressway to I-294.
After about two years of studying and talking about concepts, planners will come out with a priority list in early 2010. Then, for three years, they will look at how to finance the top projects and identify the general areas to locate them.
If financing comes through -- and it will take billions of dollars -- then officials will start the long process of further engineering, alternative studies, environmental impact analysis and land acquisition.
Harmet pegs 2016 as a "very theoretical" date to have shovels in the ground.
Planning experts say this new, deliberative process could be a sign of a lack of will to get the projects done. Other major road and transit expansions have been pushed through in two or three years.
"It may just be a case where no one has listed it as a high priority, so the planners are putting it on the slow road," said Jim LaBelle, deputy director of Chicago Metropolis 2020, which regularly compiles data to identify regional transportation needs.
Adding to the frustration of some is the fact that DuPage County and transit agencies have spent as much as $1 million in the last five or six years studying transportation in the very same area.
Harmet says those studies simply aren't detailed enough to help speed up the first two years of planning.
"We are really going to be starting from scratch," Harmet said.
To be sure, planners have a lot of political and practical speed bumps to maneuver around.
For one, IDOT officials are looking at several road and transit projects. And the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway extension and O'Hare bypass have riled Bensenville and Elk Grove officials, who stand to lose many homes and businesses to the new roads.
Such opposition led the state to abandon plans for the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway to connect to I-294 back when the route was built in 1989. The road, in fact, runs only 6 miles and does not connect to either of its namesakes -- Elgin or O'Hare.
O'Hare opponents wanted the eastern portion to sit on airport property to block new runways. Chicago officials balked.
Now, new runways are being built at O'Hare and IDOT's timeline for the airport bypass fits in nicely with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's plan to build a western terminal, likely after 2016.
Meanwhile, suburban drivers can count on nothing changing for their commutes and daily travels anytime soon.
IDOT officials will hold their first public meeting on the conceptual studies Nov. 14 in Addison. The planning process, which so far has cost $5.4 million, is being funded through $140 million in federal funds obtained for the projects in late 2005.