Quinn and Tollway:
No decision, yet, on Route 53 extension
Representatives for
Governor Quinn and for
the Illinois
Toll Highway Authority informed me, yesterday, that no decision has been
made, yet, regarding the proposal to extend Route 53
north into and through Lake County. However, I
have more information from them, below.
As indicated in
this post from Wednesday, the extension of Route 53,
from Lake-Cook County Line Road near Buffalo
Grove, to Illinois Route 120 near Grayslake, and then
east to the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate 94) near
Waukegan, is an extremely high priority to drivers in
the area. This missing highway link, for which the
right-of-way has already been reserved, not only affects
drivers in Lake County, but also in northern Cook County
as well. By having a cork in the roadway network at the
current end of the expressway at Lake-Cook Road, massive
traffic jams are unnecessarily created, every weekday
during the morning and evening rush hours, on all of the
arterial streets and many residential streets, from
Palatine Road on the south to Route 60 on the north, a
distance of 9 miles, and from Route 59 on the west to
the Tri-State Tollway on the east, a distance of 13
miles.
There's also a proposal, which really should be built
at the same time, to extend the Route 53 extension to
the west and north from Route 120, to meet up with the
Route 12 expressway at the Wisconsin border, between
Richmond, Illinois, and Genoa City, Wisconsin.
This problem is very reminiscent of the way traffic
was perpetually screwed up at the south end of the
Northwest Expressway (now the Kennedy Expressway,
Interstate 90/94), near downtown Chicago, before the Dan
Ryan expressway was opened up in 1962. I remember how
traffic used to come to a standstill, approaching the
crash barrels blocking traffic on the Northwest from
traveling past the Congress Expressway (now the
Eisenhower Expressway, Interstate 290), as everybody was
forced to slowly filter off onto either the eastbound or
westbound Congress, to find an arterial street to take
them south, exactly the same way that drivers are forced
to slowly filter off of the Route 53 expressway at
Lake-Cook Road to find another way north.
Here, specifically, is what the spokespeople for Gov.
Quinn and for the Tollway told me, yesterday:
Robert Reed is the
Director of Communications (Press Secretary) for
Governor Quinn. Shortly after Governor Quinn's
news conference, yesterday, to announce a
new Chairwoman and two new Members for the Tollway Board
of Directors, Bob Reed responded to my inquiry to
him from the previous day. He contacted me to say that
senior staff is aware of the situation and will continue
to evaluate it.
I also had a telephone
conversation with Joelle McGinnis, the spokeslady for
the Tollway, shortly after the
Tollway's part of the news conference. Joelle said
that, in order for the Tollway to proceed, the Illinois
General Assembly has to pass a resolution directing the
Tollway to study the Route 53 extension, and the
Governor has to direct the Tollway to put together a
plan.
A federally required
Environmental Impact Study ("EIS") has been done on a
proposed extension, but the EIS was done so long ago
that it has expired. Another EIS would need to be done
before the extension could be built. Additional work
done by the Lake
County Transportation Improvement Project pre-dates
the EIS.
Also, the extension may no longer be listed by the
federal government as a proposed project.
I asked Joelle what citizens who support the project
could do to help get the project restarted. Joelle
suggested that advocates for the Route 53 extension
contact their state legislators and the Governor to let
their opinions be heard.
I've done that. How about you? Would you like a
quick and easy way to do it, too? Leave a comment,
here, and I'll make sure that the Tollway, the Governor
and the General Assembly gets your message.
