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Chicago Roads Hit the Gas in 2014

$1.4 billion slated for toll road improvements as speed limits go up.


Motorists will see plenty of orange warning signs next year as crews rehabilitate the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, expand the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and attack other projects as the Illinois Tollway spends a record amount of money on construction.

Drivers will also see more troopers on the toll roads when a new state law kicks in allowing the maximum speed limit to hit 70 mph in some places, officials said Thursday.

The Tollway plans to spend $1.4 billion for capital projects — the most the agency has budgeted for a single year, officials said.

Related Jane Addams Memorial Tollway Illinois' new speed limit law hits bump in road Map of where tollway speed limits will be increasing

Most of the work will be part of the ongoing rebuilding and widening of the Addams (Interstate 90), but much of the money will also go toward turning the existing Elgin-O'Hare into a tollway and starting work on a new bypass along the western edge of the airport.

The Tollway will also take in more than $1 billion in revenue, mostly from tolls, according to the agency's proposed 2014 budget. Some of that money will go toward boosting the number of Illinois State Police who patrol the tollway system.

Those troopers will come in handy, officials said, when a new state law takes effect Jan. 1, raising the maximum speed limit along some stretches of rural highways to 70 mph.

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Source: Chicago Tribune.

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