Building a toll road to nowhere?
Quinn’s Illiana Expressway runs into problems
TRANSPORTATION | Patrick Yeagle
Plans for a proposed toll road between Illinois and Indiana appear to be moving forward, despite a lack of funding and environmental concerns.
The Illiana Expressway, which would connect Interstate 55 south of Chicago with Interstate 65 in northwestern Indiana, is one of Gov. Pat Quinn’s top priorities, but critics say the road is unnecessary and a bad deal for the state.
First studied and rejected by the Illinois Toll Road Authority in the 1990s, the Illiana Expressway is intended to relieve congestion on Interstate 80, which runs parallel 15 miles north of the proposed Illiana corridor. The Illinois Department of Transportation supports the project, however.
Between 100,000 and 150,000 vehicles use Interstate 80 in each direction per day, according to a 2011 study by IDOT, and the agency predicts explosive population growth in the adjoining south suburbs of Chicago – as much as 170 percent by 2040. However, IDOT’s population estimate is significantly higher than estimates from other entities studying the region, including the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), which controls federal funding for major projects in that area.
CMAP formerly opposed the project, saying it would “expose the State of Illinois to extensive financial risk” and would have “negligible impacts on regional transportation performance.”
“(The plan) recommends a focus on maintaining the existing system first, and using most of the region’s limited remaining resources to modernize the system,” CMAP said in September 2013. The group’s policy committee later flipped to support the project, following alleged lobbying by Quinn’s administration.
Quinn says the project, along with a proposed third airport south of Chicago, would “create jobs and unlock the true economic potential of the south suburban region.” Quinn and IDOT say Illiana is needed to bolster Illinois’ accessibility as a major inland transportation hub.
The project would require the State of Illinois to come up with between $250 and $500 million up front, leading critics to ask where the money would come from as Illinois faces a backlog of unpaid bills at $6.5 billion and growing.
The current version of the proposal has the state partnering with private companies to build the tollway, but the state would take on all of the risk. Under the proposal, Illinois would pay the winning bidder an annual guaranteed “availability payment,” even if the tollway doesn’t make enough money to break even. IDOT predicts cars will have to pay $11 to use the 46-mile expressway, which equates to about 24 cents per mile on the Illiana Expressway. That would be significantly higher than the average six cents per mile on existing Illinois toll roads.
Senate Bill 1825, which would have authorized funding for the project and set terms like the availability payments to the winning bidder, died in the Illinois General Assembly without a vote in May.
Though the project has several prominent champions, including Quinn, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and several state politicians, critics have panned the idea as too risky and unneeded. Even the pro-toll news website Toll Road News says the Illiana Expressway “looks like a crock.
“There are no population centers in the corridor; just a couple of small rural hamlets so no serious local traffic (and) no major centers that need connecting at either end,” wrote Toll Road News reporter Peter Samuel in a 2013 editorial.
Al Grosboll, co-legislative director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), says his group is concerned not only about the fiscal aspect of the project, but also about its potential effect on the nearby Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. At 19,000 acres, Midewin is the largest continuous open space in northeastern Illinois, and it contains a rare section of dolomite prairie that offers habitat for several species of animals. Andrew Armstrong, a staff attorney with ELPC, says the project would drive away animals, pollute the Kankakee River and degrade more than 1,500 acres of nearby farmland.
ELPC represents a coalition of environmental groups, including the Illinois Sierra Club and the Midewin Heritage Association, which filed a lawsuit against the Federal Highway Administration in July. The lawsuit claims the FHA violated federal law by approving an environmental study by the Illinois and Indiana departments of transportation that failed to show the need for the project and evaluate alternatives.
“Defendants violated (the law) because they acted arbitrarily and capriciously, abused their discretion and acted contrary to law by relying on inflated population and employment forecasts for the Illiana Expressway study area,” the lawsuit states. “These inflated forecasts, in turn, became the basis for inflated traffic projections used to establish the proposed new tollroad’s purpose and need, and for evaluating alternatives to fulfill that need.”
Filed in federal court in Chicago, the lawsuit awaits a judge’s decision.
Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].
