Wacker Drive Construction Moves To Monroe, Adams

Image Credit: Duane Rapp

The seemingly never-ending Wacker Drive reconstruction shuts down the Monroe and Adams intersections starting today, in the next phase of the $300 million project. At this rate we'll be nearing retirement before the project is completed and the earlier intersections will be in need of touch-ups.

Anyway, in addition to the Monroe And Adams intersections getting their facelifts, Madison Street re-opens between Canal and Franklin, Franklin will continue to be a two-way street, southbound access from Lower Wacker to Upper Wacker via Randolph will continue to be closed to all traffic, and access to and from Congress will continue to be closed to traffic from Wacker.

The Revive Wacker Drive website has a full list of impacts here, and CTA has a full list of the bus routes that will be affected by the move here.

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By Chuck Sudo in News on January 9, 2012 9:05 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Brianbobcat

Yes it actually is going pretty well. Keep in mind the scope of what they're doing. Complete demolition, foundations, entirely new deck and roadways, not to mention the pluming and electrical, all in 6 months. If you want to talk about what's taking forever, how about the bridge over the river for Congress Parkway. That thing's been close for seemingly 2 years now and has been delayed several times. When will that fully reopen.

Dave Snell

To be fair, it's only been about 2.5 years of construction. The city probably could have finished Wacker Drive construction faster... if the city's driving population would have been OK with closing *every* east-west bridge over the river simultaneously. But since drivers never would have put up with being unable to use any bridge over the river for 6-9 months, they have to go with the (much slower) close-one-in-each-direction strategy.