(abbreviated '''I-290''') is the main Interstate highway due westward from the
Chicago Loop . I-290 is officially called the '''Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway''' or colloquially the '''Eisenhower''' or for short the '''Ike'''. Before being designated the Eisenhower, the Eisenhower was formerly called Congress Parkway due to the surface street that it became at its eastern terminus in the
Loop . The highway connects
Interstate 355 (
North-South Tollway ) in
Addison with
Interstate 90 and
Interstate 94 near the Loop. Interstate 290 continues north from Interstate 355 to meet Interstate 90 again in
Rolling Meadows . This part of the freeway is known locally as
Illinois Route 53 , or simply '''Route 53''', as Illinois 53 existed before Interstate 290. The highway in total is 29.84 miles (48.02 km) in length.State of Illinois. "Illinois Highway and Street Mileage Statistics". December 31, 2004.
http://www.dot.state.il.us/travelstats/mileage.html
Built as one of the first superhighways in the
Chicagoland area in the 1950s, the expressway originally extended to the area around
Interstate 294 (
Tri-State Tollway ). East of Austin Boulevard in
Oak Park , the Eisenhower is 8 lanes wide (4 each westbound and eastbound) — west of that point, the highway is generally 6 lanes wide. The Eisenhower is named after
Dwight D. Eisenhower , principal architect of the
Interstate Highway System .
U.S. Route 20 is
Multiplexed on Interstate 290 for a mile (1.6 km) near
Elmhurst . When the Eisenhower Extension was built, Interstate 290 took the place of Lake Street through this densely populated area, before returning to its own right of way north of Elmhurst. US 20 is not signed anywhere on this mile, but to stay on U.S. 20 one must travel on Interstate 290.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Eisenhower was extended to U.S. 20 (Lake Street) and
Illinois Route 64 (North Avenue). It was then further extended to present-day Interstate 355, at the time simply a spur from the highway and named Illinois 53. Until
1978 , the Eisenhower Expressway was Interstate 90. After the
Northwest Tollway was completed, Interstate 90 was routed north along the
Kennedy Expressway and onto the tollway. Old Interstate 90 then was named Interstate 290, and that numbering continues to this day.
Because the segment from Interstate 294 to Interstate 355/Illinois 53 was built last, that portion of the highway is referred to as the Eisenhower Extension. The Eisenhower Expressway, extension included, is 23 miles (37 km) long. If the Illinois 53 portion of Interstate 290 is added to that, it is actually 30 miles (48 km) long.
In
2003 -
2004 , the first five miles (8 km) of Interstate 290 out of
Schaumburg were rebuilt, replacing pavement that had well exceeded its estimate 20 year life — the original pavement was built in stages from
1963 through
1970 as part of Illinois 53.Carlson, Rick.
Illinois State Highways Page: Routes 41 thru 60 . Last updated March 15, 2006. Retrieved March 26, 2006. A fifth auxiliary lane was added between the entrance and exit ramps of exits 1 and 4, and exits 4 and 5. The most important safety upgrade was the demolition of the raised grassy median between the westbound and eastbound lanes, and its replacement with a permanent concrete median and wide shoulders.
]]
The
Chicago Transit Authority maintains a
Rail Line from the loop west to
Forest Park in the median of the Eisenhower, and then closely paralleling the Eisenhower for about 10 miles (16 km). While convenient for mass transit, it has also severely limited any possibility of lane additions to the Eisenhower where the train line is. Preliminary studies on such an effort are already starting, however.
The Eisenhower Expressway has subsections along its length that are used most often by traffic reporters to describe the extent of congestion on a highway. Users of the highway unfamiliar with these terms can easily be confused by them.
- — Named after the Chicago suburb of Hillside , it refers to a major merge with Interstate 88 , and almost always is used when referring to inbound (eastbound) traffic. It is at this point that Interstate 88 terminates eastbound. It was called the Strangler because before its reconstruction in the early 2000s, seven through lanes were forced to merge to three, creating large backups. Urban legend suggests a former Columbia College student was the first known to use the expression relating to the traffic pattern in the late 70s during the "Hillside Strangler" murders media craze. Reconstruction widened part of this area to nine lanes (5 inbound — three through, two local, and 4 through lanes outbound), allowed direct exits to Mannheim Road ( U.S. 12 / U.S. 20 / U.S. 45 ) from Interstate 88 for trucks, created an inbound collector-distributor ramp for Mannheim Road, and added a timed gate that closed a ramp from Roosevelt Road ( Illinois Route 38 ) to inbound Interstate 290 during rush hour periods. These improvements helped congestion at the site, but also pushed pre-existing congestion further east to the six lane portion of the highway. The Strangler is located at about mile marker 18.
- — The portion of the highway between Mannheim Road at mile marker 17 and First Avenue north of Maywood , a stretch of 3 miles (5 km). Named because all of the crossroads between these two exits are named numerically, in ascending order traveling outbound (westbound). 1st Avenue ( Illinois Route 171 ) is exit 20. There are exits to 9th Avenue, 17th Avenue, and 25th Avenue to the west. These exits are spaced about 3/4ths of a mile (1200 m) apart. This stretch is notorious for being extremely congested, and is one of the higher priority projects in Chicagoland today.
- or '''290 Extension''' — The eight miles (12 km) of road between current-day mile marker 7 (to Lake Street/US 20) and North Avenue ( Illinois Route 64 ), mile marker 15. This section was built in the late 1970s.
- — The eastern terminus of Interstate 290 where it meets Interstates 90 and 94, which are multiplexed through Chicago. North of this interchange Interstates 90 and 94 are called the Kennedy Expressway , while south of it Interstates 90 and 94 are called the Dan Ryan Expressway . The interchange itself consists of eight heavily used, very tight ramps that wind around each other, giving the interchange a distinct circle shape when looked at from above. This design, adequate when first built in the 1950s , has become a hazardous part of the highway because of its tight turns and extremely short approaches. However, redesign of the interchange has been determined to be prohibitively expensive because of the small, 2-to-4 city-block area that the interchange is built on.
- — Just east of the I-290 - I-90/94 Junction in downtown Chicago, the Post Office is a building that stretches over Congress Parkway. If one drives eastbound on I-290 and continues past I-90/94, the highway ends and becomes Congress Parkway. The Post Office is a landmark which is sometimes used in referring to the end of I-290 in downtown Chicago; for example, a traffic reporter might say "... forty minutes from Mannheim to the Post Office...".
: The building was used by the
United States Postal Service until
1996 . It was bought by a developer in
1998 , but as of early
2006 no progress has been made with regards to development on the site. The building itself was built from
1921 to
1933 in the
Art-Deco style, and is 2.5 million square feet (230,000 m&
2) in size. The vast majority of the space is away from windows, and as a result has markedly less value than would be expected for a downtown structure. In spite of its unused state, the building is still known to visitors and commuters alike as the unofficial gateway into the
Chicago Loop area.Gallun, Alby. "$300M revival plan for Post Office". ''Crain's Chicago Business'' July 1, 2005.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=16994&rel=1 . Retrieved January 12, 2006.
''This table is incomplete: please feel free to add to it!''
