Start 9: Robert Kingery Expressway (tie for 9th place)
Cost: $300 million

There's not much confusion about why the Robert Kingery Expressway is soon to undergo a mammoth two-year rebuilding, said Dirk Fuqua, engineer of project implementation for the Schaumburg-based Illinois Department of Transportation District 1.

"It's about 50-plus years old, and it's falling apart," Fuqua said.

The project is currently in a preliminary shoulder-widening stage. Next year, one side of the road will be rebuilt and in 2006, the other side will be reconstructed. The project is expected complete by the end of October 2006.

The work will stretch from the Indiana side of the border at Calumet Avenue and extend to Interstate 394 and Interstate 94 to 170th Street.

The original road and subsequent resurfacings will be torn out and replaced with what Fuqua calls "30-year-life pavement" that consists of 14 in. of concrete and 6 in. of asphalt above 24 in. of stone.

While work is ongoing, three lanes of traffic will remain open.

"Not only are we raising the bridges, but we're widening the shoulders, so we can put traffic out there on the shoulders," Fuqua added.

When complete, the entire 6.6-mi.-long stretch of expressway will offer no fewer than three lanes in each direction, with most of the distance featuring four lanes plus an auxiliary lane.

"Right now, it's three lanes in each direction but right at 394, it goes down to two through lanes at one spot," Fuqua said.

160,000 Daily Vehicles

The biggest obstacle he expects to encounter will be ensuring ordinary traffic flow - 160,000 vehicles a day - will continue to move through that stretch of roadway as work proceeds.

Maintaining that traffic flow "will be a very big challenge," Fuqua said. "We've worked very hard to keep all the local people around there informed of what's going on."

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