Elgin X-Way/O'Hare Bypass--Update

Joe Ryan has an article in today's Daily Herald that outlines the long and tangled history behind the non-completion of the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and the O'Hare Bypass.

The gist of the story is that almost 20 years ago the communities nearest O'Hare, especially Bensenville and Elk Grove, fought off these projects as part of their effort to halt the expansion of O'Hare Airport, perhaps the most important economic asset of this State. At that, IDOT threw up its arms and focused on more important things, such as building airports in places where no one wants to fly (MidAmerica Airport) and not building airports at all (Peotone Airport).

As Ryan recounts:

For the last 17 years, state officials have done nothing to plan for that extension or the connecting western bypass, which would head south from I-90 along the western edge of the airport, creating a ring road with the Elgin-O'Hare.

IDOT apparently hopes to lull the recalcitrant local communities into acceptance of major transportation improvements serving the O'Hare area with years of hearings and public meetings:

Instead of moving right into designing the new routes -- which have been on the books since the 1970s -- state officials have decided to spend the next three years talking to local leaders and coming up with a variety of projects to address traffic issues. The final list could range from new transit to small expressways or large privately-owned toll roads.

In 2011, state planners will then start working on how to pay for the projects and precisely where they would be placed. That means actual construction might not start until 2016 or later, nearly 30 years after the original battles over the Elgin-O'Hare extension.

It will be all but impossible to placate the community holdouts, which are nothing if not vociferous in their efforts to save the State from thousands of new jobs and a shot at nurturing a global city within its boundaries. According to Ryan, the O'Hare expansion project will be done by 2016. It makes good engineering sense to get the associated road and transit improvements in place--or at least well underway--by that point. After all, why move dirt twice and draw out the adverse construction impacts over many years rather than just a few?

"Rick Powell," who commented on yesterday's post, argues that IDOT's seemingly glacial pace is in fact required by law:

These days, however, it is very difficult to wind through the maze of NEPA regulations and state-mandated "Context Sensitive" processes that are designed to consider all reasonable alternatives, to examine every possible environmental impact, and to involve the community extensively in the process. Can you think of any communities that might have issues with this potential project? You may not like it, but this is the legal and political environment for large scale transportation projects today.

It may be that the pendulum has swung too far to the side of "paralysis by analysis" but if so, it will probably take awhile for it to swing back the other way. Meantime, "public private partnerships" do not yet have the legal standing in IL to do a slash-and-burn design/build highway project with eminent domain powers, and even if they did, they would likely be subject to the same procedural issues as the public agencies must operate with.

Is this assessment accurate? Can it be that the federal government accepts that its $140 million earmark will be used to fund years of studies and public meetings and not a single transportation improvement in the area?