Illinois Sets Funds to Alleviate No. 1 Trucking Bottleneck

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced Monday a major reconstruction project to add “much-needed capacity to the Circle Interchange in the heart of Chicago.”

The 2010 American Transportation Research Institute / Federal Highway Administration freight bottleneck list “identified the Circle Interchange as the No. 1 bottleneck among highways crucial to the nation’s freight transportation system, operating at well below ideal speeds for more than 14 hours a day,” Quinn’s office said in a press release.

About 26,000 of the more than 300,000 vehicles that use the interchange each day are commercial trucks, according to ATRI.

Preliminary analysis by the Illinois Department of Transportation estimates that building additional lanes on some of the key ramps in the Circle Interchange will reduce congestion by as much as 30%, the group said.