Future
The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) launched a series of studies to help facilitate access to west central Illinois, colloquially named Forgottonia for the lack of highways through the region. Currently in progress are upgrades (to a four-lane expressway) of U.S. Highway 67 from U.S. Highway 34 in Monmouth (near Galesburg) south to Macomb, and U.S. 67 from Macomb south to Alton, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Also underway is a similar upgrade of Illinois 336 from Quincy to Macomb.
The Peoria-to-Macomb study involves an eastern link from Macomb to Peoria alongside existing U.S. Route 136. The corridor being studied runs from U.S. 67 east to Interstate 474, and has been studied since the 1950s by Illinois and Federal agencies as a potential link between Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri, the Chicago-Kansas City Expressway. As of May 2006, the corridor study had identified two alternatives for Illinois 336. The route would be a limited access freeway for a few miles outside of Macomb to Bardolph, and again for a few miles outside of Peoria, east of Hanna City. For either alternative, Illinois 336 would be constructed as an expressway between Hanna City and Bardolph. In Illinois, an expressway allows partial-access to the highway, with direct access to the expressway from private residences and fields, while retaining interchanges and frontage roads for businesses and arterial state routes.
The completion of Illinois 336 would also relieve congestion on U.S. Route 24, currently the only direct route between Peoria and Quincy. It would also allow Peoria to Quincy traffic to avoid the alternate route — Interstate 155 south to Interstate 55 through Springfield, to Interstate 72 west. This combination of highways is currently the fastest route between Peoria and Quincy. Illinois 336 would shave at least 50 miles (81 km) and up to an hour off the trip. Currently, both U.S. 24 and the Interstate 155/55/72 routes require upwards of 3.25 hours of travel.
This route would also provide a faster route from Peoria to reach cities such as Kansas City and Denver.
There have also been discussions on using future Illinois 336 for a Peoria-to-Chicago Highway but is still being debated.
Read more about this topic: Illinois Route 336
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Captain Hank Quinlan: C’mon, read my future for me.
Tanya: You haven’t got any.
Captain Hank Quinlan: Hmmm. Whadya mean?
Tanya: Your future is all used up.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)