{"id":237126,"date":"2010-01-27T13:59:17","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T18:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a818d1fb970b"},"modified":"2010-01-27T13:59:17","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T18:59:17","slug":"in-campaign-mode-quinn-announces-wacker-drive-road-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/237126","title":{"rendered":"In campaign mode, Quinn announces Wacker Drive road work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by Monique Garcia and Jon Hilkevitch<\/em> at 12:59 p.m.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Less than a week before the primary election, Gov. Pat Quinn today announced a $366 million construction project this morning to completely revamp the north-south section of Wacker Drive.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The three-year project will start in April. It calls for both levels of Wacker Drive from Randolph Street to Congress Parkway to be rebuilt, including creating a separated service drive on the lower level along with increased clearance space and better lighting.<\/p>\n<p>Preliminary work to relocate utility lines is scheduled to start this spring and continue through the year. The Congress Parkway interchange ramps from Wacker leading to the Eisenhower Expressway and Dan Ryan\/Kennedy Expressways also will be shut down this spring and remain closed until December 2012, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The impact on traffic will be considerable, officials warned. Lower Wacker will be reduced to one lane in each direction this year.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>\u201cIt will be a little inconvenient for people, but I think most people understand that putting up with a little inconvenience in order to make things safer is well worth that investment,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cEspecially if it creates so much economic activity and jobs that can help us all get back to where we want to be in our Illinois economy.\u201d<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Quinn said the project will be funded through the state\u2019s $31 billion capital construction program. While that plan has yet to be fully implemented, Quinn guaranteed the state has the money on hand to pay for the project. Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig said the state may also issue bonds to pay for the project, which will be backed by the state\u2019s road fund. <br \/><\/br>\u00a0<br \/><\/br>Quinn has used this week to focus on job creation and economic growth heading into Tuesday\u2019s primary election against rival Democrat Dan Hynes, who a Tribune poll shows has been able to close in on what was once a large lead for Quinn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Monique Garcia and Jon Hilkevitch at 12:59 p.m.Less than a week before the primary election, Gov. Pat Quinn today announced a $366 million construction project this morning to completely revamp the north-south section of Wacker Drive.The three-year project will start in April. It calls for both levels of Wacker Drive from Randolph Street [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}