Construction nightmares? Depends on your route to work

So, I was running late Friday, and the first light I encountered turned yellow well before I had hit the intersection. Opted not to chance it.

A few blocks later, a guy hanging off the back of a City of Elgin truck was planting traffic cones to mark just-painted yellow dividing lines. Once that holdup was over, a garbage truck did a rolling stop, forcing me to slow down and no doubt accounting for the light that was turning red just as I approached it.

Meanwhile, a guy in an SUV pulled alongside me in the adjoining lane, which stopped us at a set of railroad tracks. Across the tracks was another light where the road empties onto Route 31. He apparently thought it was OK to roll through the first red light en route to the second one, where he made a rolling right turn. This annoyed me to no end.

"Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!" I yelled, channeling Gomer Pyle's attempt to arrest Deputy Barney Fife for a traffic violation.

From there, things got appreciably better, as I eased onto I-90, the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, where I can go as fast as I want. I'm not saying I do that. I'm just sayin'.

Others have noticed, too. Take this excerpt from a letter to the editor in our Saturday editions.

"Anyone who drives I-90 regularly knows there are no speed limits on that road. Speed limits are routinely ignored. The speed limits are more like suggestions."

But I come here not to judge the alleged nonenforcement of speed limits, but to suggest the Addams, fresh off a $2.5 billion overhaul completed earlier this year, is one of the best things to happen to the beleaguered commuters of the Northwest suburbs. And to further suggest that one's perspective of how big a nightmare summer road construction is hinges on the path one takes to work.

I chatted about this phenomenon with Marni Pyke, our transportation writer.

She quickly pointed out scores of ongoing projects, including widening of the eastbound lanes of the Kennedy Expressway, which usually has a closed lane and big-time clogs right after you've zipped down the Addams on your way to the city. That's right; forgot all about that, and we regularly go that route to visit the kids. Marni noted, too, a rebuilding of the Farnsworth Avenue bridge at I-88 in Aurora is a traffic quagmire. "Ah, that doesn't bother me," I said, "I don't live down there any more."

Of course, Marni noted, the Bryne interchange near the Loop is "a mess," and the Eisenhower retains the unofficial title of one of the worst paths to the city. So, state transportation leaders are studying potential solutions such as tolled passing lanes.

One problem is the cost of such improvements is high - in dollars, of course, but also in commuter inconvenience. It's easy to forget now that the Addams was a five-year project.

But yet another big one now looms: A $4 billion widening and overhaul of a 22-mile stretch of the Tri-State Tollway between Balmoral Avenue in Rosemont and 95th Street in Oak Lawn, tentatively set to start next year.

Boy, I remember a redo of that road in the early '70s when my summer job was painting a huge apartment building in Rogers Park with two buddies. Every day, I'd sit in I-294 traffic on the way home to Naperville and curse my commuting luck.

I know one job I won't be doing next summer.

jdavis@dailyherald.com