I-88 work in Aurora area close to wrapping up

Can it really be - a summer without construction on Interstate 88?

The remaining work associated with putting in a new, wider Fox River bridge will wrap up by May, according to the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority.

"I-88 should be good for this year," tollway spokesman Jan Kemp said Friday.

The westbound deck of the bridge opened in December, several months earlier than planned. Contractors now are getting set to fix pavement on a westbound section of road between the entrance and exit ramps for Route 31 near North Aurora, install landscaping near where Route 25 crosses under the highway, and finish building a barrier wall in the median.

The project, which took three years, was budgeted at $162.5 million. It included replacing a four-lane bridge with six lanes, and widening the highway from four lanes to six from the Aurora Toll Plaza to Orchard Road near North Aurora. The toll plaza was rebuilt with open-road I-PASS lanes. The interchanges at Route 31 and Orchard were rebuilt. The work was part of a $6.3 billion "congestion relief" program for all the Illinois tollways.

Contractors were given incentives to complete the bridge work on time. And "maintaining a construction zone over the winter adds a lot," Kemp said.

You will still see some construction workers and traffic lane shifts near Eola Road. The tollway is repairing an approximately 52-year-old railroad bridge.

Last December workers completed an $800 million three-year project to widen a 23-mile span of the Reagan Memorial Tollway from Oak Brook to North Aurora. That work wrapped up a month after the toll authority opened the new $36 million Eola Road interchange, a project which took around one year.