DuPage, Cook leaders to push for tollway-led expressway

It's the tollway or the slow way, is expected to be the message local leaders from Cook and DuPage counties deliver today at a news conference on the future of the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway.

The Illinois Department of Transportation project would extend the expressway to O'Hare from its eastern terminus in Itasca and build a bypass around the airport linking to I-90 and I-294.

But with Illinois' operating budget shortfall of $13 billion and only a modest capital program, state money is scarce for the estimated $3.6 billion project.

In March, DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom and Bensenville Village President Frank Soto urged Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board directors to adopt the project.

They're likely to repeat that call today.

"Everyone is on the same page for western access. Now we have to find a way to fund it," Schillerstrom said. "If we're going to get it done, the best way is to have the tollway do it."

DuPage planners estimate the project will create not just construction work but permanent jobs from economic development generated by western access to O'Hare.

"If we want to affect the economy now and put people back to work, this project needs to be under way as soon as possible," Soto said Wednesday.

Choosing a western bypass location was problematic with objections from towns, including Elk Grove Village and Bensenville, to designs putting the road in their municipalities. The final plan drew broad support and locates the bypass mainly on the western edge of O'Hare. It connects to I-294 to the south in Franklin Park and to I-90 to the north near the Des Plaines oasis.

Local consensus is one reason the tollway should favor it, Schillerstrom said.

Meanwhile, other coalitions are courting the tollway to adopt rival projects such as the Prairie Parkway in the far West suburbs, building an I-294/I-57 interchange and extending Route 53 into Lake County.

So far, officials have said they want to weigh all the proposals before deciding.