by Cal Skinner
I don’t know why it took so long to figure out that House Speaker Mike Madigan has plans for suburban tollway motorists to finance his version of the Crosstown Expressway. The scheme struck me Sunday night when I was reading Chicago Tribune transportation reporter John Hilkevitch’s article entitled, "New Crosstown project has key difference—tolls".
Back in the 1970’s Glencoe Democratic Party State Representative Harold Katz passed a bill, which I was pleased to support, requiring that any new tollway pay its own way. This law, of course, was repealed by DuPage County legislators when they wanted to build I-355. So, toll tax payers on the Tri-State, the Northwest and the East-West Tollway have been forced to subsidize the old 355, as well as its extension into Will County.
Who cares that Northwest Tollway, Tri-State and DuPage portion users of the East-West motorists have paid for their road more than once? Madigan obviously plans to use this Pate Philip technique to build the Crosstown. Why not? It’s free money, isn’t it? And suburbanites won’t raise a stink.
There too busy earning money to continue paying tolls that should have been abolished decades ago.
