The Mile Long Bridge carries traffic on the Tri-State Tollway over the Desplaines River, just south of its intersection with Interstate-55, between Willow Springs and Burr Ridge. In its counter-clockwise path around the metropolitan area, the Tri-State Tollway crosses Interstate-57, Interstate-55 (the Stevenson), Interstate-88 (the Reagan), Interstate-290 (the Eisenhower), and Interstate-90 (the Jane Addams), making it a ubiquitous reference point in traffic reports. (After they reunite, Interstate-94 continues as the Tri-State Tollway.) Between Schiller Park and Des Plaines, the Tri-State Tollway runs just east of O’Hare Airport. It meanders counter-clockwise through such suburbs as Markham, Midlothian, Hickory Hills, Willow Springs, Western Springs, Elmhurst, Schiller Park, Des Plaines, Glenview, and Northbrook before rejoining Interstate-94 between Deerfield and Riverwoods. The Tri-State Tollway (Interstate 294) branches off Interstate-94 just west of Munster. The improvements are meant to cure the interchange, named after Chicago's first female mayor, that was perennially considered one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country. The interchange began extensive renovations and renewals in the years following 2014, closing many of the exit and entrance ramps in the process. Virtually all traffic reports in Chicago mention this circular interchange at least once. This squid-shaped knot of entrance and exit ramps is located a few blocks southwest of the Chicago Loop, where the Dan Ryan, the Kennedy, and the Eisenhower Expressways all converge. The Jane Byrne Interchange (aka, Circle or "The Spaghetti Bowl") The paragraphs below identify all the major highways and all the associated landmarks that we think you need to know to make sense of the local traffic reports. At the same time, Interstate 294 (the Tri-State Tollway) is a secondary highway that branches off Interstate-94 near Indiana, encircles the Chicagoland suburbs, and rejoins Interstate-94 near O’Hare Airport. For example, Interstate 94 is a primary highway leading from Indiana to Illinois to Wisconsin. The extra digit in a secondary highway is the prefix to the two-digit number of the primary highway. In contrast, primary highways are labeled with two. Though this is probably self-evident, in the interstate highway system, secondary highways that branch off of primary highways (typically to encircle a metropolitan area) are labeled with three digits. The attention shifts to the Bishop Ford Freeway, the four tollways - the Jane Addams, the Ronald Reagan, the Veterans Memorial, and Interstate 80/94 (the Borman) - and, finally, Lake Shore Drive. Typically, the broadcast starts with a report on the Edens Expressway, then moves to the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson, and the Dan Ryan, in that order. The local convention is to report the traffic from the northernmost expressway and then circle counter-clockwise around the city. What’s the point of listening to a report on Chicago traffic when you don’t know any of the jargon? Or when the traffic reporter speaks too fast for human comprehension? Here at domu, we want to help you get to work on time, so we’ve gone and assembled another one of our notoriously informative guides, this time focused on demystifying traffic reports.
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