Illinois Tollway groundbreaking for first all-electronic toll (AET) plaza - near Fermi Labs

Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (aka Illinois Tollway) and local officials have broken ground on Illinois' first cashless or all-electronic toll interchange - located appropriately close by one of the Chicago area's premier hightech institutions, the Fermi National Lab. The Illinois Tollway has been a leader in implementing open road tolling through the middle of all of its mainline plazas, but all of these retain cash collection on the sides.

The all-electronic toll (AET) interchange is known as the I-88 Eola Road Interchange. Eola Road presently bridges the I-88 Reagan Memorial Tollway without any connections to it. The project involves two pairs of ramps each side of the Tollway to connect to parallel local streets just off Eola Road.

The location is 52km (32 miles) virtually due west of the downtown Loop, in the middle of a band of outer suburbs of the greater Chicago metro area.

Just 5.5km (3.4 miles) to the west on the Tollway from Eola Rd is the Aurora Mainline toll plaza so the west facing ramps of the new interchange are untolled. Facing east the off-ramp on the north side swings right to a straight stretch with two AET toll lanes. For entry to head east on the south side, there's a tight loop and again two toll lanes.

Work consists of:

- four ramps

- widening local streets, especially on the south side,

- two signalized intersections for the two ramp sets

- relocating a state hiking path known as Illinois Prairie Path

Total project cost is put at $50m, half of which or $25m will be borne by the Tollway, $19m by Dupage County, and $6m (covers right of way acquisition) by the City of Aurora. Tollway policy on new interchanges requires local support, political and financial.

The toll system is being installed by Electronic Transaction Consultants (ETC) as part of their larger electronic toll; system contract with the Tollway.

Local officials

Some quotes from local officials:

- DuPage County Board Chairman Robert J. Schillerstrom: “This project is going to significantly reduce traffic congestion in our area, which means less time on the road for our residents and more time with family. This is more than an investment in improving roads; it is about improving quality of life.”

- US Rep Bill Foster: “This interchange will be a vital improvement to our region, reducing congestion while at the same time creating jobs and growing our economy. I am proud we were able to secure almost a million dollars in funding to support this project.”

- Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner: “Aurora residents will benefit directly from reduced congestion on local roads and improved access to I-88 with the new Eola Road Interchange. The project will also bring thousands of jobs to the area.” (from Tollway press statement)

Jan Kemp of the Tollway says the project is an ideal one to start all-electronic tolling because motorists in the area already have well over 80% transponder usage. And those without can still use the existing interchanges.

Construction of the Eola Road Interchange is part of the Tollway’s $6.3 billion Congestion Relief Program named "Open Roads for a Faster Future" designed to improve travel by rebuilding and restoring 90 percent of the system, widening and adding lanes to existing expressways, converting 20 mainline toll plazas to barrier-free Open Road Tolling, and extending I-355 south to I-80.

Illinois Tollway maintains and operates 460km (286 miles) of interstate-designated tollways in 12 counties in Northern Illinois.

Along with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (which operates the Turnpike and Garden State Parkway) it is the leading tollroad system in the US in terms of daily transactions and vehicle-miles travelled.

Others' AET

Most toll facilities in the US are looking at all-electronic or cashless tolling. Some are moving fast, others more cautiously:

- E470 in Denver will go all-electronic July 4 this year

- North Texas Tollway is transitioning to AET through 2010

- Miami Dade Expressway system will be all-electronic by 2011

- Central Texas RMA went all-electronic on 183A tollroad earlier this year

- PANYNJ has a detailed planning process in place to go all-electronic for the big Hudson River crossings and Staten Island bridges

- Houston has an all-electronic tollroad Westpark Tollway

- a handful of express toll lanes including 91 Express, CA/I-15 in san Diego, MN/I-494 in Minneapolis, WA167 southeast of Seattle, CO/I-25 Denver, FL/I-95 Miami are all-electronic

Others are doing new interchanges all-electronic selectively like Illinois Tollway

- Florida's Turnpike has a handful of AET interchanges

- Pennsylvania Turnpike has one AET IC and several more have been proposed but some have run into local resistance

- Orlando Orange County Expressway has several under way

Eola Road

Fermilab short for FermiNational Accelerator Laboratory has Eola Road running to its southern boundary. This particle physics research center has played a major role in development of nuclear physics. Its most spectacular machine is the Tevatron a circular particle accelerator with a diameter of 2000m (1.25 miles) and a circumference of 6285m (3.9 miles). They used it to discover and study the quark, and subsequently tinier particles, the building blocks of matter and energy.

It is named after Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) a brilliant Italian immigrant to the US at 38, a developer of the first nuclear reactor, The Pile, at the University of Chicago in late 1942, a prominent member of the Manhattan Project team that developed the first atomic weapons, and Nobel prize winner. Stricken by stomach cancer he died at only 53 and is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

COMMENT: This is a nice project, and a good move to take fuller advantage of modern toll technology to get motorists more directly to their destinations. But with no bridge work, a modest amount of pavement-on-fill work, and off-the-shelf signals and toll equipment, $50m seems an excessive price. We hope there isn't a legacy of blagojevichian style contract selection doing some inflation here.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-04-16