CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — As the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) continues its ongoing bridge work on the Kennedy, commuters will find another closure complicating their inbound drive through July.
Starting Monday, IDOT crews will block the ramp that allows traffic to exit the Kennedy express lanes at Diversey Parkway.
Due to the closure, drivers who enter the express lanes at Montrose Avenue won't be able to exit until Ohio Street.
Those who need to exit the Kennedy Expressway anywhere on the Northwest Side will need to stay in the local inbound lanes, where two lanes will remain closed until November as part of the three-year reconstruction project on the highway.
Over the course of the Kennedy’s bridge work project, the express lanes have typically been the least congested option.
The closure at Diversey Parkway is expected to reduce traffic in the express lanes even further, which will likely result in even higher travel times in the local lanes through July.
Bridge work on the Kennedy kicked off in late March. Since then, Metra has reported higher ridership, especially on the U.P. North and Northwest Lines, the North Central Service and Milwaukee North.
Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said the rail agency is seeing post-pandemic ridership highs on all four of those lines, as people search for alternatives to driving on the Kennedy and Edens Expressways.
“There’s plenty of capacity on all our lines for people who want to flee the ‘carmageddon’ on the Kennedy,” Gillis said. “We can’t say all the increase we’ve seen since March is due to the Kennedy construction, but it’s certainly a contributing factor.”
Prior to the start of construction, officials said more than 275,000 vehicles travel on the Kennedy Expressway each day.
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