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?
Showing posts with label O'Hare Bypass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label O'Hare Bypass. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Elgin X-Way/O'Hare Bypass--"Very Theoretical"
It looks like the $140 million earmark the region got in the currrent federal transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU) for the construction of (a) an extension of the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway to one or both of those destinations and (b) a western bypass road behind O'Hare Airport connecting the Northwest Tollway and the Tri-State Tollway will be used to fund plenty of studies and plans over the next decade. Just what we need.
The three major papers in the Chicago area all had stories today (here, here, and here) that IDOT is going to do a very thorough study that will take until at least 2010 to put together a "priority list" of highway and transit improvements in this land beyond O'Hare. "Then, for three years, they will look at how to finance the top projects and identify the general areas to locate them." After that, if the financing comes through, "the officials will start the long process of further engineering, alternative studies, environmental impact analysis and land acquisition."
Clearly this is not a project on a fast track and the question is why not. After all, the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and O'Hare Bypass projects already have been the subject of years if not decades of studies and debate. One would think that our transportation officials would have a pretty good idea by now about what to do. And why have they not viewed the $140 million earmark from the current federal transportation bill as a clear federal direction that the State and region should get cracking on these transportation improvements, which are expected to deliver major economic and transportation benefits to the region and thus the nation. (See 2006 West O’Hare Corridor Economic Development Study here.)
The State already has spent $5.4 million of this $140 million earmark. Rather than spending more years and substantially more dollars putting together a "priority list," then more years and more money looking for financing, and then still more years and more money doing alternatives analysis and the like, maybe the State should be looking for ways to compress the process and do these tasks as simultaneously as is legally possible. Why not shoot for a big slug of federal transportation dollars in the next federal transportation bill for serious engineering and construction work rather than wait on two more six-year federal transportation bill cycles to get construction going full bore as seems likely given IDOT's current plan?
Business Leaders for Transportation proposed last year that the Expressway and the Bypass be constructed in a much more timely fashion using a public-private partnership. (Report here.) Certainly there are fully public options as well (e.g., public operating authority financing construction by charging tolls).
Senator Don Harmon's bill (SB 378) to give IDOT and the Toll Authority the power to enter into public-private partnerships is stalled in the General Assembly. Given IDOT's go-slow approach to the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and the O'Hare Bypass, such power likely would be wasted on that agency anyway.
$140 million is a lot of federal money. Is it a worthwhile investment of those valuable transportation dollars to pursue a plan that makes it just a "very theoretical" possibility, according to Pete Harmet, an IDOT area programming bureau chief, that construction will even begin by 2016? After all, the earmark is for "Construction of O'Hare Bypass/Elgin O'Hare Extension" and presumably not for a decade's worth of expensive priority lists and preliminary plans.
As IDOT knows all too well from its Dan Ryan project, construction costs in recent years have risen significantly faster than the rate of inflation. Waiting to do these projects are not going to make them any easier or cheaper.
The three major papers in the Chicago area all had stories today (here, here, and here) that IDOT is going to do a very thorough study that will take until at least 2010 to put together a "priority list" of highway and transit improvements in this land beyond O'Hare. "Then, for three years, they will look at how to finance the top projects and identify the general areas to locate them." After that, if the financing comes through, "the officials will start the long process of further engineering, alternative studies, environmental impact analysis and land acquisition."
Clearly this is not a project on a fast track and the question is why not. After all, the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and O'Hare Bypass projects already have been the subject of years if not decades of studies and debate. One would think that our transportation officials would have a pretty good idea by now about what to do. And why have they not viewed the $140 million earmark from the current federal transportation bill as a clear federal direction that the State and region should get cracking on these transportation improvements, which are expected to deliver major economic and transportation benefits to the region and thus the nation. (See 2006 West O’Hare Corridor Economic Development Study here.)
The State already has spent $5.4 million of this $140 million earmark. Rather than spending more years and substantially more dollars putting together a "priority list," then more years and more money looking for financing, and then still more years and more money doing alternatives analysis and the like, maybe the State should be looking for ways to compress the process and do these tasks as simultaneously as is legally possible. Why not shoot for a big slug of federal transportation dollars in the next federal transportation bill for serious engineering and construction work rather than wait on two more six-year federal transportation bill cycles to get construction going full bore as seems likely given IDOT's current plan?
Business Leaders for Transportation proposed last year that the Expressway and the Bypass be constructed in a much more timely fashion using a public-private partnership. (Report here.) Certainly there are fully public options as well (e.g., public operating authority financing construction by charging tolls).
Senator Don Harmon's bill (SB 378) to give IDOT and the Toll Authority the power to enter into public-private partnerships is stalled in the General Assembly. Given IDOT's go-slow approach to the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway and the O'Hare Bypass, such power likely would be wasted on that agency anyway.
$140 million is a lot of federal money. Is it a worthwhile investment of those valuable transportation dollars to pursue a plan that makes it just a "very theoretical" possibility, according to Pete Harmet, an IDOT area programming bureau chief, that construction will even begin by 2016? After all, the earmark is for "Construction of O'Hare Bypass/Elgin O'Hare Extension" and presumably not for a decade's worth of expensive priority lists and preliminary plans.
As IDOT knows all too well from its Dan Ryan project, construction costs in recent years have risen significantly faster than the rate of inflation. Waiting to do these projects are not going to make them any easier or cheaper.
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