Hell On Earth: Construction Began Today On The Kennedy Expressway Inbound And Is Expected To Cause Insane Traffic For The Next FOUR YEARS

Sun Times - A three-year Kennedy Expressway construction project begins Monday night that’s sure to wreak havoc with commutes as the work is done all the way from the junction with the Edens Expressway to Ohio Street.

Stretches of the two inbound left lanes will be closed until July. Then, the work will shift and shut down stretches of the two right lanes until construction season ends in the fall. 

The impact of the $150 million construction project should hit home as drivers head downtown Tuesday morning, said Maria Castaneda, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Expect major delays. 

“Every day when you’re driving, you’re going to notice a change,” Castaneda said. “You’re going to notice that your available lanes are going to be less and less as we go each stage.”

There used to be that thing in Chicago called “rush hour”, like exists in every major city, but that’s gone away over recent years. It’s just brutal traffic all hours of the day now, 7 days a week. Doesn’t matter if it’s morning, noon, or night. Weekday or weekend. The highways here are a fucking nightmare. And somehow, The Kennedy is about to get a whole hell of a lot worse. 

If you’re from here you already know.

If you’re not, allow my friend Barstool Carl to do the honors educating you. The following is from one of the best blogs to appear on Barstool Chicago, and describes The Kennedy Expressway to a t.

2. 90 Kennedy: 3 lanes for the most populated part of the state. Mind blowing shit. Worst part is sitting in traffic watching the Blue Line race by you while you’re doing the mental math to figure out how much faster those blue line passengers will get to their destination than you. Northsiders see it as a point of pride – the view is pretty damn nice coming in, they say. But it comes with a cost. The traffic boils down to people not knowing how to exit in the Loop, and that makes its way all the way back to Rodgers Park. It’s not the people on 90 as much as it is the basic layout. How anyone thought we could be smart enough to navigate the exits on the Kennedy will always be beyond me. We were set up to fail with 90 and thanks to decades of poor infrastructure decisions it appears that tune isn’t changing anytime soon. For the commuters, take the blue line or the metra. You’re a savage if you hit 90 in/out every single day. Get your head check.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, which is why I quoted Carl.

Now picture that hellscape backed up even more than it already is on a good day!

We are fucked.

And don’t tell me to suck it up and take CTA out to O’Hare either. I rode that shit daily for all four years of college, and for like 5 years after it when I was dead broke and used the daily brushes with death, psychopaths, and human feces as motivation to work my ass off so I never need to risk my life riding the murder train ever again in my life. 

Chicago takes pride in calling itself “The City That Works” 

It works all right. 

Slow as fuck. 

That downtown interchange they were working on for 10 years is FINALLY complete and Yah they did a great job I’ll admit. But was it worth the rats nest of detours and maze of on and off ramps we navigated through snarling traffic for a decade? Time will tell I guess.

All I know is they’re patching up giant sink holes in Japan in one week somehow. 

So it’s possible to speed things up. We’d just rather draw them out I guess?

And we all know that when the time finally comes and this project is complete, the roads they finished on the interchange will have worn down to shit and they’ll just head back to fix those for another 4-5 years. Rinse wash repeat. 

We need the chopper taxis and we needed them yesterday.

P.s. - can’t reference hell on earth and not include the mobb deep classic