By the end of the decade, automobiles carrying at least two or more passengers will be able to hop in their own special lane on the Stevenson Expressway and fly past the inching traffic of people sitting all alone in their cars, state officials announced Tuesday.
The Chicago area’s first-ever carpooling lanes have the potential to revolutionize the way people commute to work each day, as it has in metropolitan areas nationwide, including Los Angeles, Washington and South Florida, where the tool has been used to reduce congestion and air pollution and to encourage ride-sharing.
The project came a mile marker closer to reality Tuesday when it was included in the Illinois Department of Transportation’s five-year road improvement plan. That plan earmarks $1.3 billion in federal, state and local funds for road projects to begin in July, and for the first time in years does not include the reconstruction of a major expressway. But crews will be busy resurfacing 600 miles of roads severely damaged by the worst winter weather in 10 years, officials said.
In the south and southwest suburbs, more than $60 million will be spent to refurbish and upgrade roads in Will County, including $15 million in Frankfort and Mokena. In Orland Park, $5.1 million will go to widen 143rd Street between Harlem Avenue and La Grange Road and to widen the intersection at 151st Street and Harlem Avenue.
By far the most intriguing amid the standard cement-and-asphalt projects of the five-year plan is the concept of carpooling lanes.
“High-occupancy vehicle lanes let you get a time savings because you’re not sitting in traffic and it encourages people to have fewer cars on the road,” Illinois Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown said Tuesday. “We think we have a good opportunity here.”
Specifically, he said, there’s an opportunity to improve air quality in the region by at least 2 percent, sharply decrease travel times and pull hundreds of drivers out of their cars.
The carpooling lanes would be part of a $450 million reconstruction of the Stevenson Expressway slated to begin in 1997 or 1998. The idea for the lanes emerged from a 14-agency task force of transportation planners, and would include one lane in both directions for the 14 miles between the Tri-State Tollway and the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Only buses, vans and cars with at least two people-and the minimum may even be raised to three-would be allowed to commute in the lanes. Certain hours would be established for required carpooling, and police would ticket drivers going solo.
The Stevenson is the best candidate for the special lanes, which would be set apart from regular traffic by a 4-foot-wide painted median, because there already is plenty of right-of-way to make room for the extra lane, Brown said.
The Kennedy Expressway, for example, does not have enough right-of-way to accommodate the lanes, Brown said. But more significant is that IDOT doesn’t want the carpooling lanes to compete with mass transit such as the rail lines that share the right-of-way along the Kennedy.
But success in other parts of the country has been spotty.
In Los Angeles, home of the ultimate commuter nightmare, transportation officials first converted two regular lanes on the jammed Santa Monica Freeway into carpooling lanes in 1976. The result was more traffic backup than ever, since the carpooling lanes were taken from regular lanes.
The project was so unpopular, in fact, that a federal judge ordered the lanes reinstated for normal traffic usage after just five months.
And in 1992, drivers revolted when the carpool lanes stood virtually empty along the heavily traveled Dulles Toll Road in the Washington, D.C. area.
Mindful of that rebellion, Virginia officials last year loosened their restrictions on new carpooling lanes on Interstate Highway 66 to two-person vehicles, instead of three-person users.
But there have been success stories as well. And transportation planners say such lanes are an important component of an overall plan to reduce traffic congestion.
After January’s major earthquake, the Los Angeles region’s transportation agency reinstated some of the Santa Monica Freeway’s carpooling lanes, and the project has met with great success, speeding commute times and lightening traffic.
Other states also have found carpooling lanes worth trying. New Jersey, Washington, Minnesota and Florida, to name a few, have all instituted the special lanes, and officials say the lanes work best in states such as Texas, where there is little mass transit.
As surely as smoke means fire, the millions in road construction funds announced Tuesday for the south and southwest suburbs can only signal one thing: Growth.
More than $60 million will be spent to refurbish and upgrade roads in Will County, including $15 million in Frankfort and Mokena-two villages with a combined population of under 17,000, but exploding rapidly.
The Stevenson, a growth corridor for Bolingbrook, Romeoville and nearby Plainfield, will be resurfaced and widened in some spots to handle the added crunch of cars.
And in southern Cook County, two roads that have been relentlessly pounded by increased traffic, 143rd Street and Harlem Avenue, will receive some welcome attention.
The biggest local project is in Mokena, a village of less than 8,500 that landed $9 million to overhaul Wolf Road between the Cook County line and U.S. Highway 30.
Like Frankfort, its neighbor to the south, Mokena has caught the suburban building boom and one of its major symptoms, hopelessly clogged arteries. Local officials anxiously await the cure, which calls for replacing a bridge over Hickory Creek and refurbishing the Front Street railroad crossing.
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Frankfort, meanwhile, will receive $6 million to widen southbound La Grange Road south of Colorado Avenue-a traffic sore spot that has local drivers steaming during afternoon rush hours.
“It’s probably not going to be started until next year, but it’s quite a project,” said Frankfort Village Trustee Bob Herrick. “Traffic here is just constant gridlock after 2 in the afternoon.”
“We’ve needed this project for the last four years,” added Herrick, whose village has grown to 8,238 from 7,180 in the last three years. “And it may not get done until 1997.”
On Interstate Highway 55, roughly $27 million will be spent to improve Will County’s portion, including $14.2 million on the 8-mile stretch that runs through Romeoville and Bolingbrook.
And in Orland Park, where strip-mall sprawl has overtaken the village faster than local roads can handle it, $5.1 million in relief is on the way for two roads. The first project, which will cost $3 million, will widen 143rd Street between Harlem Avenue and La Grange Road. Another $2.1 million will go to widen the intersection at 151st Street and Harlem Avenue.
Here are the IDOT road improvement projects over $300,000 scheduled for the southwest suburbs for the next fiscal year:
Will County
– Interstate Highway 55, bridge repairs and related work over Sunnyland Drain, Lincoln Highway, Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway, Mink Creek, the Material Services property and Lily Cache Creek. $7.1 million.
– I-55 at Shorewood and Joliet, resurfacing, lighting and engineering from U.S. Highway 52 to Illinois Highway 126. $6.1 million.
– I-55 at Bolingbrook, resurfacing from Illinois 126 to Naperville Road. $3.8 million.
– I-55 at Bolingbrook, resurfacing, bridge work and extra lanes from Naperville Road to the North-South Tollway (Interstate Highway 355). $10.4 million.
– Interstate Highway 80. Bridge work over the Norfolk & Southern and Rock Island railroads. $268,000.
– U.S. Highway 6 (Maple Road) in Joliet, resurfacing from Walnut Street to the Cook County line. $1.75 million.
– Lincoln Highway over Hickory Creek, bridge replacement. $1 million.
– U.S. Highway 45 in Frankfort, additional lanes and new bridge from Colorado Avenue to former Penn Central Railroad. $6 million.
– U.S. Highway 52 (Jefferson Street) in Joliet, resurfacing from I-55 frontage road to Reed Street. $1.6 million.
– U.S. 52 (Jefferson Street) in Joliet, signal timing from Houbolt Road to Raynor Avenue. $1.1 million.
– Illinois Highway 7 (Theodore Street) in Joliet and Crest Hill, widening and resurfacing from Larkin Avenue to Broadway Street. $3.4 million.
– Illinois Highway 50 (Governors Highway) in Monee, bridge replacement and over Illinois Central Gulf Railroad and Rock Creek. $3.7 million.
– Joliet Road in Romeoville, intersection reconstruction and land acquisition at Bluff Road. $1.2 million.
– River Road in Shorewood, reconstruction from U.S. 52 to Seil Road. $1.6 million.
– Wolf Road in Mokena, reconstruction, bridge replacement and railroad crossing improvement from Cook County line to U.S. Highway 30. $9 million.
Cook County
– Stevenson Expressway (I-55), patching from Wolf Road to west of Western Avenue. $515,000.
– Stevenson, land acquisition at Tri-State Tollway near Countryside. $916,000.
– Stevenson, bridge construction at Pulaski Road. $9 million.
– Interstate Highway 57, resurfacing and patching from Halsted Street to I-80. $3.6 million.
– I-80, patching from Harlem Avenue to the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate Highway 294). $1 million.
– I-80/Interstate Highway 94, engineering from the Tri-State to Indiana state line. $600,000.
– Chicago Skyway (Interstate Highway 90), bridge painting from Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90-94) to Indiana state line. $3.25 million.
– Dan Ryan, bridge painting from the Tri-State Tollway to 31st Street. $5 million.
– Dan Ryan, express lane resurfacing from 35th Street to Marquette Road. $3.6 million.
– Calumet Expressway (I-94), bridge repair at I-80/I-294 to Thornton-Lansing Road. $2.6 million.
– U.S. Highway 12/U.S. Highway 20 (95th Street) through Hickory Hills, Palos Hills, Worth and Chicago Ridge, resurfacing and median removal. $1.8 million.
– Lincoln Highway in Matteson, resurfacing from Harlem Avenue to Cicero Avenue. $1.2 million.
– Halsted Street in Harvey, intersection reconstruction at 155th Street. $2 million.
– Halsted Street in Harvey, widening, resurfacing and lighting from 159th Street to the Tri-State. $4.25 million.
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– Harlem Avenue from Burbank to Palos Hills, resurfacing from 78th Street to Southwest Highway. $1.4 million.
– Cicero Avenue in Midlothian and Oak Forest, resurfacing, bridge and signal work from 147th Street to 159th Street. $2.5 million.
– Archer Avenue in Summit, intersection improvements from 55th Street to 63rd Street. $3.2 million.
– Archer Avenue in Summit, bridge replacement. $2.5 million.
– Ashland Avenue in Blue Island and Dixmoor, bridge work over Little Calumet River. $2.5 million.
– Governors Highway, resurfacing from Lincoln Highway to Will County line. $644,000.
– Main Street in Lemont, resurfacing from Illinois Highway 83 to Illinois Street. $590,000.
– Sauk Trail in Sauk Village, resurfacing and intersection reconstruction from Torrence Avenue to Lincoln Highway. $2 million.
– State/Dolton Avenue in Calumet City and Burnham, widening and reconstruction from Torrence Avenue to Indiana state line. $2.8 million.
– 87th Street in Chicago, Hometown and Evergreen Park, resurfacing from Cicero Avenue to Damen Avenue. $979,000.