Conscious Choice: New Tollway Plans Point the Way to Sprawl

August 1999

New Tollway Plans Point the Way to Sprawl

by Dave Aftandilian

Like many major metropolitan areas across the United States, the Chicago area stands at a crossroads. We can choose either to continue pursuing a path of sprawling development, paving over farms and forests and wetlands to build roads (and maybe even airports) along which to site yet more subdivisions, fast food restaurants, and parking lots. Or we can instead pursue more balanced development strategies, with plenty of space for industrial and residential growth, but planned in concert with open space preservation and mass transportation improvements to avoid catastrophic impacts to our environment and quality of life.

One path leads to a familiar scene, with longer commutes, more crowded roads and schools, increasing pollution, fewer parks and farms. The other promises fewer travel headaches, cleaner air and water, and open space preserved for generations to come. Which way would you choose?

If the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (ISTHA) has its way with the proposed construction of the Route 53 Tollway in Lake County (also known as the north extension of I-355, or FAP 342) and the I-355 southern extension in Will County, we’re headed for more sprawl and traffic congestion. Similar bad news could be in store if Governor George Ryan and the wealthy developers who stand to make millions prevail in their quest to build the costly and unnecessary Peotone Airport, also known as the South Suburban Airport, Chicago’s Third Airport, and the Inaugural Airport. That’s the airport all the major airlines have said they do not want and will not use.

ISTHA History

Before discussing the details of the proposed Route 53 Tollway and I-355 southern extension, it will help to take a look at how the ISTHA became the notorious institution it is today. The ISTHA was born when Illinois’ General Assembly passed a law in 1953 authorizing construction of the Tri-State, Northwest, and East-West Tollways. The law also created ISTHA to finance and operate the tollways; however, the law made it clear that ISTHA was supposed to be temporary, existing only so long as it took for the revenues collected on the tollways to pay the costs of the roads. After that, both the ISTHA and the tolls would expire.

But we’re still paying the tolls long after the original tollways should have been paid off, and ISTHA is alive and well. What happened? Answer: the "road to nowhere," also known as the East-West Extension of I-88 from Aurora to Rock Falls in the 1960s. Despite warnings from their own consultants that the extension would lose money due to high construction costs and low ridership, ISTHA obtained an exception to the original tollway law, promising to use revenues from other tollways to cover the costs of the extension — which, as expected, lost significant amounts of money.

In the late 1980s, ISTHA convinced the state legislature to rewrite the tollway law so that revenues from toll roads could be used to finance the construction of new ones. With that last barrier swept aside, the ISTHA has pushed full steam ahead on its blaring drive for an extended North-South Tollway — to be built in two parts: the Route 53 Tollway and the I-355 southern extension.

It also perhaps bears mentioning that the ISTHA has benefited from friends in high places: three former heads of the agency had previously served as gubernatorial campaign directors, including Robert Hickman, who helped raise $12 million for former Governor Jim Edgar’s 1990 election campaign, and soon after was made head of the ISTHA.

Route 53 Tollway Proposal

Fast forward to the present. ISTHA wants to relieve traffic congestion in Lake County with a twenty-five mile, six-lane extension of the present Route 53 from Lake-Cook Road north to Grayslake, where it would split east to the Tri-State Tollway and north to Wilson Road, at an estimated cost of $1 billion (which, according to the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), rises to $3.5 billion if the costs of financing and operating the proposed tollway are included). This cost would be borne for years by those using the region’s current tollways, which would provide the revenues for the new tollway’s construction.

The proposed tollway would destroy sixty-nine wetlands, several of which are known to provide habitat for endangered species, according to the Woods and Wetlands chapter of the Illinois Sierra Club. Wetlands also help reduce the risk of flooding — a major concern for Lake County, which has seen repeated and widespread flooding in the past decade. As with any road, the proposed tollway would also increase air and water pollution from tailpipe emissions and oil-slicked runoff from the tollway itself.

Learning from its mistakes in the I-355 southern extension debacle (see below), ISTHA has teamed up with the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to form the Lake County Transportation Improvement Project (LCTIP), intended to "examine a range of solutions designed to reduce congestion in the project study area." According to the project’s web site, the alternatives examined "will be a combination of roadway, rail, bus and other transportation system improvements" such as park and ride lots, bike lanes, etc. LCTIP expects to recommend transportation alternatives by 2000, and it would be a major surprise if a Route 53 Tollway is not among them.

Although LCTIP claims in its spring 1999 newsletter that an extension of Route 53 would bring only 27,500 new residents to Lake County, a state population forecast cited in "Crossroads: Smart Transportation Options for Lake County," a study sponsored by the ELPC and Citizens Organized for Sound Transportation posits that the proposed tollway would attract more than 60,000 new residents to Lake County. Because most major employment centers are located well to the east of the proposed tollway extensions, these residents would have to travel long distances to get to their jobs and back — thus increasing traffic congestion in Lake County, rather than relieving it as ISTHA predicts. In fact, the "Crossroads" study suggests that construction of the tollway, and the new residents it would draw to the area, would cause congestion on an additional sixty lane miles of existing roads.

Why build a $1 billion tollway that will just make Lake County roads even more crowded than they are now? The plan could serve as a short-term fix, but several viable alternatives to relieve traffic congestion without building an expensive tollway already exist.

First, IDOT should carry out the local road improvements that the state already has planned for Lake County, including portions of Routes 22, 45, 59, and 173. The first installment of the "Crossroads" plan demonstrates how these improvements would reduce traffic congestion without adding thousands of new residents and their cars to the Lake County gridlock. Funds should be available for these improvements as part of Governor George Ryan’s recently passed "Illinois FIRST" plan.

Second, Lake County commuter rail service should be upgraded. Once again, this alternative is already part of the state’s regional transportation plan, which calls for adding a second track to the North Central commuter rail line and other commuter rail service improvements for the county. The second installment of the "Crossroads" study shows that these rail improvements, in addition to improvements to local roads, would result in 114 fewer lane miles of congestion than the proposed Route 53 tollway.

Proposed I-355 Southern Extension

From north to south on I-355, the view looks about the same. ISTHA wants to build a 12.5-mile extension of I-355 from I-55 in Bolingbrook to I-80 near New Lenox in Will County, with a $700 million price tag. In this case, though, the goal is to provide commercial and residential development in one of the last strongholds of farmland and open space in the Chicagoland region, rather than to relieve traffic congestion. The state predicts that construction of the tollway extension would increase Will County’s population by 115,000.

Depending on whom you ask, the plan might also include a link to I-57 near Peotone, which would be very convenient should an airport be built there (see "News of the Earth," this issue). As John Walliser, a Will County resident and a member of South Corridor Against the Tollway, put it, "The prime purpose of I-355 is to ensure that state leaders get their coveted airport in Peotone. For these officials, once the highway is in place to funnel people there, the airport is the next logical step.... In fact, when the state submitted documents to the federal government concerning these extensions, they blatantly admitted that it was to serve as a feeder for a third airport."

This I-355 southern tollway extension proposal ran into a major roadblock in January of 1997, when a federal district court judge threw out the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the project. The judge ruled that the state had not complied with the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement that federal and state transportation agencies explore all potential alternatives in detail before building new highways. Most of the judge’s objections centered on the state’s "implausible assumption" that population growth in this rural part of Will County would be the same with and without the proposed tollway. After initially appealing the decision, ISTHA and IDOT agreed this past January to comply with the judge’s decision and prepare a revised Environmental Impact Statement exploring all reasonable alternatives to the proposed tollway.

Unfortunately, this does not mean that the I-355 south tollway extension is dead. Will County still is vulnerable to vastly increased traffic, dwindling open space, and overcrowded schools. Local residents would bear the brunt of the new development as it provided funds for new local roads, sewers, schools, and other infrastructure through their property taxes.

Chicago area tollway drivers would pay for the construction and maintenance of the I-355 southern extension. Although some federal funding might be available through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, most of the money would come from revenues on other toll roads in Illinois. And it would take a lot of money to build this new tollway. According to an analysis by the ELPC, the proposed tollway would bring in about $6 million in tolls a year, but to pay off the bonds required to provide financing for constructing the tollway, ISTHA would need about $55 million a year over the twenty-five year life of the bonds. That would leave an annual revenue gap of $48 million, which tollway users regionwide would have to provide. Considering that the entire East-West Tollway generated just over $43 million in tolls in 1994, we’d all be paying tolls a long time to cover the costs of the proposed I-355 southern extension.

Resources

Chicagoland Transportation and Air Quality Commission c/o Center for Neighborhood Technology, 773-278-4800 ext. 2020

Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest (ELPC), 312-759-3400

Lake County Transportation Improvement Project, 847-438-3442

Sierra Club Woods & Wetlands Group, 847-680-6437, ext. 4 (Evan Craig, Chair)

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