Question For Chicago Peeps

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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6 Responses

  1. TrevizeG says:

    Interstate 294 goes around the city. Hope this isn’t too late.Report

  2. Slade the Leveller says:

    If you’re coming from the west, just stay on 80. 294 can get clogged up, and 80 is about as close as you want to get. Otherwise, you’re hosed.Report

  3. Burt Likko says:

    Slade and Trevize, I do believe will is coming in on I-90, by way of Madison.
    In a comment on the former iteration of the blog,* I suggested either Veteran’s Tollway (I-355) or the the Tri-State Tollway (I-294) down to I-80 so as to avoid taking the Kennedy/Ryan/Skyway route directly through the heart of downtown.
    But I’ve only travelled through Chicago (or to one of the two major airports) during rush hour and so my data set may be limited. Which one is the superior choice, bearing in mind that they’re likely to have an infant starting to get cranky right around that time of day?
    * Comments seem to be gradually migrating over, but they need to move through the Disqus system first, which takes some time. All Readers! If you haven’t registered an account with Disqus yet, you’ll need to do that in order to comment.Report

  4. dan d says:

    i mentioned this on the other blog, one option is to take I-39 from Rockford to Peru, it’s about 50 miles longer but you’ll come as close to avoiding the city as possible. there’s no good road south of the city unless you want to end up in central Indiana.Report

  5. TrevizeG says:

    Burt, your thoughts were along the same lines as mine. I-294 is an infinitely superior route to taking 90 through the city at rush hour. I can’t speak to I-355 as I am a city boy and have never had occasion to use it. I will say that in my experience, I-294 only slows down when there are lanes closed for construction. But I work downtown and don’t use it every day, so I would defer to anyone who does.Report

  6. Will Truman says:

    I ended up going down to 88, cutting across and then down 294. That was what Waze recommended and it turned out well. Clancy’s Garmin recommended that she go straight through Chicago. That didn’t turn out as well. Which is kind of funny since seeing Chicago is something I’d have been more interested in and something she wasn’t, and that I have a lot more patience for urban traffic than she does, and she ordinarily avoids ever trusting the GPS and whenever she does this sort of thing seems to happen.

    (We separated with the express purpose that she would beat me to where we are tonight – home of a major Catholic university – because she has stuff to do. I had the baby, which meant that it should have taken me longer. Which it did, but only barely.)Report