THEY DESTROYED THE ROARIN' ELGIN AND GOT DISAPPOINTED.

Sixty years later, Chicagoans are still hoping that Uncle Sugar can make the Congress, now Eisenhower, Expressway, work better.

The Eisenhower Expressway/I-290 was intended as an efficient, high-speed thoroughfare to and from Chicago when it opened in 1955.

But in the 66 years since its construction, the roadway has been just the opposite: a slow and often traffic-knotted expressway that is more detriment to the city and region than a benefit.

So we can understand why a group of state legislators and suburban leaders, armed with a new study from the non-profit Illinois Economic Policy Institute, want to rebuild 13 miles of the Ike from Racine Avenue westward out to Wolf Road in Hillside — using $2.7 billion of the state’s cut of the $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure bill headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature soon.

I glanced at the report and supporting exhibits. Making the rapid transit stations less of a pain to use might be desirable. The downside of having a transit line in the median of a below-grade expressway is that the station entrances are in the middle of bridges hemmed in by frontage roads or on ramps, with the attendant traffic signal clutter. Relocating some of the ramps from their current left-lane to the more predictable right lane has merit. Widening the three lane sections to four gets you nothing.  Converting one of the lanes to high occupancy toll might get you something, but as long as you're going to get squawking, why not take the heat in support of something useful, like making the expressway a toll road.

The Sun-Times editorialists also ask a good question.  "And, just maybe, there could be serious talk about extending the [rapid transit] line farther west."  The current terminus is where the Chicago Aurora and Elgin exchanged passengers with the Chicago Transit Authority after construction work building the expressway created what the interurban viewed as an unsafe condition running into the Wells Terminal in the Loop.

It's possible the interurban wanted to quit business anyway, and the condemnation and construction provided a convenient excuse.  The last trains connecting to the rapid transit quit just after noon on July 3, 1957, and the Illinois Railway Museum sometimes re-enacts those events.

The same tax money that paid for the expressway, and the relocation of the railroad tracks, also paid to move the interurban's bridge over the Des Plaines River a few hundred feet to the north, clear of the expressway.  No trains ever used that bridge, and it was subsequently dismantled.  There is, however, an interurban right of way mostly in place (as a bike trail) all the way to Wheaton, and dividing there to go to Aurora or Elgin.  Just in case somebody wanted to get ambitious about extending that rapid transit line.