INDIANAPOLIS | Had the Illiana Expressway been handling traffic -- instead of gathering drawing-board dust -- local roads could have been spared the deluge of cars diverted last weekend from the waterlogged Borman Expressway, transportation officials said Monday.
With standing water interrupting eastbound traffic on the Borman -- Interstate 80/94 -- for nearly three days, travelers unfamiliar with region roads found themselves "pinched in Northwest Indiana," said Steve Strains, transportation director of the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission.
"I think that any east-west alternative that would make the link that people were looking for would have come in handy," he said. "Certainly an Illiana would have been an excellent option."
Andy Dietrick, an Indiana Department of Transportation spokesman, agreed "it would have been helpful to have had another alternate route, such as the Illiana Expressway, onto which east-west through traffic could have been diverted."
It signals why some lawmakers believe talk about the expressway should give way to building it.
"Had it been built 20 to 30 years ago when we first started talking about the idea, then, yeah, we wouldn't have been looking at the problems we had (last weekend)," State Rep. Dan Stevenson, D-Highland, said.
In its current incarnation, the long-stalled highway would connect Interstate 57 in Illinois with Interstate 65 in Lake County. INDOT last week selected Cambridge Systematics, a Massachusetts firm, to conduct the Illiana route study the Legislature mandated this spring.
But even that incremental step forward underscores the obstacles that have kept the proposal in the slow lane for decades.
State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, sponsored the study legislation, which instructs INDOT to explore financing options for the proposed highway. But Soliday continued this week to criticize INDOT, claiming the agency is favoring a study of a privately funded Illiana Expressway instead of giving full consideration to both public and private financing models.
