Safer, Faster, Smarter? The Road Ahead For Illinois' High-Tech Highway

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Officials say the Jane Addams Tollway will soon be faster, safer and smarter. But will it deliver?

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.
0:13.3	Hi, I'm reporter Julian Haida, and if you live on Chicago's northwest side like me, you've probably spent a lot of time on the Jane Adams
0:21.0	tollway. That's the stretch of Interstate 90 that connects O'Hare with the Woodfield Mall in
0:26.4	Schaumburg and continues beyond to Wisconsin.
0:29.1	Take it easy. Take the tollway.
0:33.6	The Illinois tollway.
0:35.7	Lately it's been getting a bit of a facelift.
0:38.3	Our question asker, who wanted to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, lives right off the tollway
0:43.3	and has noticed construction crews putting up a bunch of these metal archways.
0:48.0	You've seen him.
0:49.1	The metal poles highway signs hang off of.
0:51.7	Except these are like every half mile.
0:54.5	It looks like metal Lincoln log spanning the width to and from Chicago, and it looks like
1:01.5	they've applied these black squares that are probably going to be LED screens above each lane.
1:08.5	These metal archways look expensive.
1:12.0	So our question asker wanted to know what they're for, and if they're really worth the cost.
1:19.9	To find out, I headed to the Illinois tollway headquarters in West Suburban Downers Grove.
1:25.7	Greg Bedelov, the executive director, is excited to tell me what's up.
1:29.4	Bells and whistles and sensors and fibers and cables.
1:33.1	He's geeking out about the massive rebuild of the Jane Adams,
1:37.4	which hasn't seen an update since opening in 1958.
1:40.9	The rebuild is funded from tolls and will cost $2.5 billion.
	...

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