Reader question: Why widen U.S. 20 before more of I-90?

October 15th, 2009 at 03:03pm Thomas V. Bona

Passenger Seat regular Sally Hanks asked a good question that deserved its own post.

Speaking of freeways: Although I would welcome the widening of U.S. 20 from I-39 to IL-2, I question the prioritization. If they come up with an assesment that says it needs it, and/or the funds are available, why don’t they direct those funds to widen I-90 between Elgin and Rockford? No assesment needed there!

Thanks for the question. A few things:

1. Remember, I-90 between Elgin and Rockford is the Illinois Tollway, so all widening projects there are paid for by tolls not by state construction funds. By statute, IDOT can’t send its money, which comes from fuel taxes, registration fees and other funds, to tollway projects.
2. Even if they could, Elgin to Rockford is much farther than the U.S. 20 project. They couldn’t get very far in that widening if they put this money to it.
3. It’s not that the assessment is to determine if the project is needed - they’ve already determined it is - it’s the necessary environmental study to see what alignment the road should be in, and whether widening can be done without too many negative impacts.
4. Actually, from a pure numbers point of view, the 20 project does pretty well vs. the tollway. First of all, there’s a separate project to widen the bypass between the Cherry Valley interchange and where I-39 heads south. That presumably is a higher priority, and would cause a bit of a choke point on U.S. 20 if more of the bypass isn’t widened. Also, while traffic on the bypass is less the Tollway, it’s not tons less. The portion where U.S. 20 and I-39 share actually has higher traffic than the tollway does for a good chunk of the Elgin-Rockford stretch; while the rest of the bypass  to be widened has perhaps 5 to 25 percent less traffic, according to Getting Around Illinois.

But I think point number 1 is the biggest key. Thanks for the question!

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