History
Construction was planned in the early 1970s, but no work was ever started. Because of the runaway inflation rates in those days, the price tag on the Crosstown Expressway was placed around $1.2 billion.
In January, 1979, the Crosstown Expressway project was cancelled by then-Mayor of Chicago Jane M. Byrne and Illinois Governor James R. Thompson, and the money which was to be used for its construction was placed into the Interstate Highway Transfer Fund. This money was eventually used for the construction of the city's subway/elevated Blue Line rail extension to O'Hare International Airport and the construction of the Orange Line to Midway Airport.
In 2001, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans for a Mid-City Transitway, using the exact alignment proposed in the 1960s plan. That plan, along with a proposed CTA rapid transit line in the same corridor, were placed in the Chicago Area Transportation Study's Destination 2020: Regional Transportation Plan and still awaits study and approval.
On February 21, 2007, Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan proposed a piece of legislation that would make the Crosstown Expressway a part of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (abbreviated ISTHA). However, the proposal was not previously looked at by the office of the mayor, governor, the ISTHA or the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Read more about this topic: Crosstown Expressway (Chicago)
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“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)