Illiana Expressway

A Illinois news report suggests that the proposed Illiana Expressway’s creation might be influenced by the ability of the Illinois Toll Road Authority to catch toll cheaters who abuse open road tolling lanes.  Illinois’ Toll Road officials don’t know how much money is lost to cheaters, according to the Daily Herald.

Writes Joseph Ryan of the Daily Herald:

Tollway officials announced last month that they would look at building a Route 53 north extension, the West suburban Prairie Parkway, the O’Hare western bypass and the south suburban Illiana Expressway.

They also are considering tolls on the Eisenhower Expressway and raising fees during rush hour to discourage congestion.

The success of all these projects hinges on Open Road Tolling, which eliminated backups caused by cars lining up to pay their tolls in favor of electronic charges. If the electronic system that catches toll cheats in I-PASS lanes isn’t sound, experts say, the public may find it that much harder to accept the expansions officials envision.

“This will really erode public confidence in (the tollway’s) ability to carry out what they are supposed to do,” said Joseph DiJohn, director of the University of Chicago’s Metropolitan Transportation Support Initiative.

“It will make it very difficult to get public support” for future projects, he added, if the problems aren’t fixed.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Electronic Toll Collection, Illiana Expressway, Illinois. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.