History
The Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways was established in 1913 by the State of Illinois. Since then, the Department has focused primarily on the construction of area expressways and on the maintenance and rehabilitation of facilities under its management, which total 557 centerline miles of highways, 1,474 lane miles of pavement, 130 bridges, 332 traffic signals and five pumping stations from five maintenance garages.
More recently, under President Preckwinkle’s leadership, the Department has recognized its broader transportation planning and implementation responsibilities, including:
- Bringing on new leadership, starting with Superintendent John Yonan, to more effectively manage operations.
- Renaming the Department of Transportation and Highways, in order to better respond to the range of transportation needs from freight and rail to transit and roads to bike and pedestrian issues.
- Using County transportation dollars and staff expertise on behalf of communities to better achieve local and regional community and economic development goals. For example, we are:
- Helping Robbins use a federal grant for better pedestrian access to their train station by providing the local match and improving Kedzie Avenue with a new streetscape.
- Rebuilding and expanding Center Street in Harvey to ease truck flows to the CN’s Intermodal Terminal and facilitate the redevelopment of industrial properties nearby.
- Financing and building 151st Street in Phoenix (a local road) as a truck route to retain Sterling Lumber, a company with 110 jobs that expects to add 50 new positions in the next two years.
- Partnering with the Tollway to build a full interchange at Roselle Road—an investment that helped attract a company with 400 jobs to Schaumburg.
- Partnering with DuPage County and other transportation agencies on key projects, such as the Elgin-O’ Hare Expressway/Western Access Project, that are critical because they enhance metropolitan economic development opportunities.