First the Ike, then North Avenue, then Roosevelt ...

Warning. Warning. Danger. Danger.

Crazed editor's summertime traffic rant approaching.

Call me naive or stupid or both, but a few months ago, I thought maybe this would be the year I wouldn't have to rave out over the wrath of roadwork. My optimism stemmed from on-time completion this winter of the three-year overhaul of I-88. Not just a nice, new surface, but new lanes were added. Closer to home, a new interchange opened at Eola Road. Road life was good.

But an ominous harbinger came in the form of one of those portable signs I noticed while inbound on the Eisenhower Expressway. In its inimitable understated fashion, it warned: Roadwork starts April 1. Expect delays.

The expected spate of news stories followed. Plan for a traffic disaster of epic proportions. Not only was a 27-mile stretch of the I-290 extension, the Eisenhower Expressway and a swath of I-355 being resurfaced, some major, major work was simultaneously starting in the Loop. That includes an overhaul of upper and lower Wacker Drive, a rebuilding of the bridge near the old post office and making Congress Parkway more pedestrian-friendly.

All of this is not very motorist-friendly. At best, the I-290 work will be finished by late fall, hopefully before the snow flies. But while commuters might breeze, relatively speaking, into the city, they'll be met by the work in the Loop for two more years. The Illinois Department of Transportation told staff writer Jake Griffin that strategy was preferred over doing the projects piecemeal and stretching them out over 10 years. So, it boils down to this: Do you want three years of abject misery or a decade of semi-misery? Do you prefer a headache or an upset stomach?

The first week of Traffic Armageddon, as transportation writer Marni Pyke dubbed it, we were teased that things might not be as bad as feared. She zoomed into the city via the Eisenhower from DuPage in less than a half-hour during the morning rush hour. She noted it was Good Friday, and spring break was that week, too. Maybe more to the point, though, the state hadn't put up all the lane-closing barriers.

That reality hit late last week, and the horror stories followed immediately. As Griffin noted earlier this week, tales of two-hour commutes surfaced. Heck, I was hearing the horror stories within my own family. My wife spent almost two hours on the Ike getting from Lincoln Park to our home in Aurora - on a Saturday afternoon. I made the same trip the next day, but came home via the Kennedy and I-90 to I-294 south. Saved close to an hour.

Alas, this commuting nightmare gets only worse for the citizens of DuPage County.

What the state doesn't call major roadwork still can be a major headache. Hence, the somewhat piecemeal approach we took this week as a few "patching" projects came to our attention.

The first came from alert readers who wondered what the heck was going on along North Avenue, described in Griffin's initial story as an alternative to the Ike. Turns out the road is in need of pothole patching and traffic sensor installation. Three of six lanes will be closed between County Farm and Swift roads until May 16.

(A brief aside? In the 1990s, we not-too-facetiously referred to North Avenue as a death trap. It was a high-speed, four-lane, undivided thoroughfare. It seemed that almost monthly we'd respond to police scanner reports of the Lifestar helicopter taking victims of head-on crashes to the trauma center at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. We documented the fatalities, and no other road in DuPage County came close. Now, I can't recall the last time we had a fatality on North Avenue. So I am certainly not an opponent of fixing our roads; I just like to whine about them.)

The day after the North Avenue patching story, Griffin was working another story when he discovered yet another major east-west, alleged Eisenhower alternate, road with lanes shut down for more pothole patching. It's only a three-quarter-mile stretch of Roosevelt Road, between Route 53 and Finley Road, but as we all know, its repercussions travel far beyond the point of the roadwork. That job, too, is slated to be finished late May.

After that, I'm sure, it'll all be smooth sailing.