Gantry wrote:* Starts at 10pm Friday* Inbound completely closed down from Chicago to Grand, they are making everyone get off and take a detour* Outbound will only have one lane near OhioFuck. I have to get from North & Western to Manheim & Montrose and back every day. I always take the highway, anyone have any ideas of the quickest non highway route? I am bad at directions and figuring these things out on surface roads

That is lame, they should just repair it, it does wonders for traffic flow, especially with Marianos there now. I can't even imagine how bad that'll fuck traffic up when they start. More construction shit:http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/25734309/carmageddon-on-kennedy-expressway-to-begin-soonTrying to figure out how to get to work and shit I need to do after work this weekend

greg wrote:PEPPER! wrote:traffic will super suck when they fix the bridge and I'm not looking forward to taking my kid to Lane every morning next year, but spend a minute under that thing and tell me they don't need to do it. try not to get hit by falling concrete.Western viaduct over Belmont?They aren't fixing it, they are tearing it down.I wish they were fixing it.Chris Hall mentioned this to me a while back. We were wondering out loud why a cash strapped city wouldn't just repair it.Once I thought about it, I don't know that that bridge would be able to structurally survive repairs/resurfacing.

Western and Belmont. That's fucking weird and lame

So apparently things are open already, supposed to be working until 5am. Now it's down to 2 weekends instead of three, must be way ahead of schedule.

I think they aren't doing a new bridge because of the cost. It would need to be widened 12 feet to stay with modern code or whatever.

Gantry wrote:So apparently things are open already, supposed to be working until 5am. Now it's down to 2 weekends instead of three, must be way ahead of schedule.I think they mus be busting ass to try to keep commuter bitching to a minimum.

Gantry wrote:This link was the impetus and didn't know a proper thread for it, they are demolishing the Western/Belmont bridge and making it a standard intersection. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140610 ... shed-2015#I have a hard time seeing how no bridge would be an improvement. A friend of mine lives right by that bridge--how could you live with all that construction?

Losing the Western Belmont overpass is gonna be tragic and is yet another nail in the coffin that is driving in Chicago. On driving in Chicago in general; In the past decade, I've come to consistently note that there's not a single roadway project that involves CDOT that hasn't managed to make traffic flow worse than before. Now I will rant; CDOT is trying to please too many constituencies (cyclists, pedestrians, green folks) and in doing so has made driving almost unbearable, in my driving lifetime. Where there were 2 clear lanes for car traffic, there is now one car lane, one bike lane, and one parking lane, for example. (okay, kill the parking lane then, if you have to share the roads, but keep traffic moving!) I have no idea who is behind these idiotic plans, but they clearly don't actually drive themselves around in Chicago. No, people will not give up their cars for bicycles or public transit, no matter how bad you make their driving experience. Instead, they will just simmer with rage til they explode. Or move out of town. GRRRRRR.

Apparently not taking my idea of making it into a giant icelandic style hot tub the city of Chicago has decided to build a pile of dirt to surround the hole so it is not such an eyesore at ground level.There is still hope that the george lucas Star Wars museum will use it to make a Jar Jar Binks themed amusement area.