Opinion

Rt. 53 study is expensive, unneeded

Posted November 15, 2015 12:00 am

This whole Rt. 53 situation gets more like "Alice in Wonderland" every day.

First CMAP violates the Open Meetings Act in voting to recommend the Illinois Tollway spend $40 million in environmental and planning studies to build Rt. 53 through a wetland. Now the Tollway has set up a meeting to discuss the CMAP recommendation even before CMAP can make its recommendation legal.

Rt. 53 will never be built and should never be built. It will be the most expensive expressway ever built in Illinois. Nearly $3 billion for a 12.5-mile road with a 45 mile-per-hour speed limit.

It is too expensive and environmentally damaging. It is a 1960s solution to a 2015 transportation problem.

A $40 million study is just plain nuts. What engineering and planning companies will get rich on this silly study?

For $40 million, many of the congestion problems can be solved by widening Rts. 83 and 45. We don't need a $40 million study for that.

I had hoped Gov. Rauner would end politics as usual in Illinois, but if his hand-picked tollway board approves this $40 million waste of money, it will prove we have the same old politics with just a different quarterback.

Come on, Gov. Rauner, tell your hand-picked tollway board to stop this Rt. 53 foolishness once and for all.

Bill Morris

Grayslake

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