The first segment of the Elgin O’Hare Expressway West Bypass study is scheduled to be complete in early 2010 with a final environmental impact statement and record of decision that illustrates a preferred transportation system plan for the area.
Once that preferred plan is identified, the Illinois Department of Transportation will begin the study’s second tier, which involves detailed engineering and environmental studies for parts of the selected plan that are ready to move forward.
That stage is expected to be complete by 2013.
In August, IDOT released a draft environmental impact statement. You can read the executive summary here and visit the project’s Web site here.
The expressway’s original study area covered about 100 square miles, and was bounded on the north by the Jane Addams Tollway, on the west and south by Interstate 290 and on the east by the Tri-State Tollway.
According to IDOT, as roadway alternatives were developed and analyzed “it became apparent that changes in the transportation network in this region had effects in an area west of the study area.”
The existing stretch of the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway between U.S. Route 20 and Interstate 290 on the east was dedicated in 1993.