Champaign newspaper article on I-57/I-74 interchange

[froggie]

With the design they chose, one isn't really necessary.

[paulthemapguy]

I always saw WB 74 to SB 57 (and the reciprocal) as the primary movements at that interchange, so I'm not sure where "I-39" goes calling it a non-essential movement.  That one's very essential.

For designs such as this, having flyovers in "opposite corners" works better operationally because the two remaining loop ramps don't have weave conflicts.  They probably went with this design because, as I noted above, WB-SB *IS* the big movement, so EB-NB gets a flyover by association in order to eliminate the weaves.

This is absolutely correct. W74 to S57 is the primary movement for two big reasons. The big one being that local Champaign / Urbana traffic uses the interstates to navigate around the cities. The second one being that traffic from Danville, IL and Indiana wanting to go to Decatur and Springfield have to go south on I-57 to get to I-72.

Actually it sounds like you're talking about E74 and S57??

[captkirk_4]

I always saw WB 74 to SB 57 (and the reciprocal) as the primary movements at that interchange, so I'm not sure where "I-39" goes calling it a non-essential movement.  That one's very essential.

For designs such as this, having flyovers in "opposite corners" works better operationally because the two remaining loop ramps don't have weave conflicts.  They probably went with this design because, as I noted above, WB-SB *IS* the big movement, so EB-NB gets a flyover by association in order to eliminate the weaves.

When I was saying non-essential movements, I was primarily referring to EB I-74 to NB I-57. That one is not needed. 

They really should be constructing a flyover from NB I-57 to WB I-74. I'm shocked they are not.

They have to by default since the WB 74 from the shopping district to SB 57 is the most used and will get a high speed flyover ramp. With growth in Mahomet and Lake of the Woods due to families fleeing the dreadful CU public school system that EB 74 to NB 57 ramp may see much more traffic in the future as well as I always take that route myself when coming from Mahomet to get off at Olympian Ave as a shortcut to Meijer and the Prospect shopping district which is much faster to access from the north. SB 57 to EB 74 may seem to be heavy due to the university, but that traffic is really only on specific days at specific times, also much of it uses the EB remnant of I 72 rather than head into Urbana, especially Football traffic.

[Tom958]

I'm amazed at the 40 mph loop ramps. 

[captkirk_4]

Construction has finally begun on this project. Cones for a couple miles along 57 and sometimes a state trooper checking speed as you approach. They have Bloomington Rd all diked up and appear to be building half the bridge at a time with traffic constricted to one lane across. Once all the bridges of the secondary routes are lengthened to accommodate the new traffic flow work on the new ramps and flyovers will begin.

[ilpt4u]

Thread bump!

WCIA-CBS 3 Meteorologist Kevin Lighty posted some aerial imagery of the Champaign I-57/74 interchange upgrade project on facebook. 67 second video

Plenty of work remaining but the flyovers are beginning to take shape

https://fb.watch/oDGLIeqFv7/

[edwaleni]

Thread bump!

WCIA-CBS 3 Meteorologist Kevin Lighty posted some aerial imagery of the Champaign I-57/74 interchange upgrade project on facebook. 67 second video

Plenty of work remaining but the flyovers are beginning to take shape

https://fb.watch/oDGLIeqFv7/

Ah! You beat me to it. I saw this yesterday.

[captkirk_4]

The flyover from W 74 to S 57 has all its girders placed along with the two bridges from W 74 to N 57 They finished a couple weeks ago, but no work seems to have begun yet on placing the steel girders on the pylons on E 74 to N 57? Maybe they will need to reposition all those cranes and are waiting to finish the two new halves of the mainline 74 bridge over 57 so they can tear down and place the beams for the other half where the old highway now carries traffic? All I know is it sure took a lot of time, in China I know each of the two flyovers would probably have two teams starting from each end and the whole thing would have been laid out in a few weeks. Erosion is also really starting to carve these furrows into the sides of the raised earthworks for all the ramps and grass definitely needs to be planted ASAP to stabilize the things. I haven't seen the photo radar camera speed trap van since late 2022 so it seems to have been a reaction to the accident that happened on NB 57 in the fall of 2022. I do see ordinary State Police writing tickets on the NB and SB 57 fairly often as I pass through here daily yet somehow still see semis blazing through in the 45 speed zone at nearly 70 in the left lanes.

[triplemultiplex]

All I know is it sure took a lot of time, in China I know each of the two flyovers would probably have two teams starting from each end and the whole thing would have been laid out in a few weeks.

Yeah but who the hell would rather live in China than Illinois?
Don't praise dictatorships that use slave labor, man.

[Henry]

I hate IDiOT for constructing those damn cloverleafs at all-Interstate junctions. Here's hoping more replacements will come in the future.

[captkirk_4]

All I know is it sure took a lot of time, in China I know each of the two flyovers would probably have two teams starting from each end and the whole thing would have been laid out in a few weeks.

Yeah but who the hell would rather live in China than Illinois?
Don't praise dictatorships that use slave labor, man.

OK, well I could also say the Eisenhower would also have gotten in done a lot faster. It's not "slave labor" but the legalism with endless "studies" and "permits" needed to get the thing going and just the economic malaise that deems it better for one crew to get 5 years of work out of it by going slow rather than a bunch of teams getting it done quickly then off the the unemployment office because Illinois is largely dead economically. We are supposed to be getting a new H-Mart in the old County Market building in downtown Urbana. However it is taking absolutely forever and the excuse given is that the "permitting" is the hold up. One thing for sure, H-Mart's have nice, inexpensive food courts in them where you can get restaurant quality food cooked without dealing with all that sit down table and menu, tip, waiting, etc. that caused an entire fast food industry to spring up in the mid 20th century to bypass that had the drawback however of offering little more than junk food until the next wave of Chipotle type business models have begun to replace the fried potatoes and burgers with something a bit more fulfilling.

[triplemultiplex]

Well then praise mid-20th Century America's capacity to get things done from the first word.  Why bring up China at all?  You were asking for that kind of response.

[ilpt4u]

https://illinois-department-of-transportation.prezly.com/i-5774-interchange-ramps-reopen-tonight

IDOT announced the new NB 57 to EB 74 ramp is open. Not one of the new Flyovers but it is progress

[Rick Powell]

Well then praise mid-20th Century America's capacity to get things done from the first word.  Why bring up China at all?  You were asking for that kind of response.

When I was a young man, I had the privilege of talking to many of the people who built the interstates (mainly I-80 and I-55) in the 1950's in northern IL. There weren't nearly as many permits to obtain, and the NEPA environmental process was unheard of. Since there wasn't anything resembling a computer (a mechanical adding machine with a print-out was about as sophisticated a machine as they had), alignments had to be worked out on paper and quantities calculated by hand. Surveys and measurements were done manually with optical instruments and steel measuring tapes. It was a very labor-intensive effort to design and build highways, usually in a hazy cloud of cigarette smoke. It was a male-dominated business (I don't think we had a female engineer until sometime in the late 60s), but there were a substantial amount of people who came from other countries to America who wound up in the effort.

[US20IL64]

"Well then praise mid-20th Century America's capacity to get things done..."

That led to "NIMBY's" and "freeway revolts", later on. Also, lots of "highways to nowhere", i.e. I-180.

The 1956 cloverleaf interchanges were meant for lower population and traffic counts. Champaign added population since 2023, now up to over 90k. Growing, while other central IL cities are shrinking. Be glad getting something.

[edwaleni]

Did the cities really grow, or did they simply lose population slower than other Illinois cities?

https://wgntv.com/news/illinois/these-are-the-fastest-growing-cities-in-illinois-according-to-new-report/

Below is a list of the seven Illinois cities to see one-year population increases:

Elgin: 8.36%
Arlington Heights: 4.71%
Peoria: 3.86%
Waukegan: 3.04%
Naperville: 1.83%
Rockford: 0.26%
Joliet: 0.17%
Waukegan saw the largest population increase at 7.43%, followed closely by Elgin.

The 11 other cities analyzed by SmartAsset were not as lucky.

Narrowly missing the growth group was Chicago, which saw a population decline of 0.02% between 2022 and 2023. Over the last five years, the drop was much larger at 1.53%.

Chicago sits atop a list of seven Illinois cities that experienced a population reduction of less than 1%. Others include:

Champaign: -0.06%
Bloomington: -0.36%
Palatine: -0.39%
Bolingbrook: -0.43%
Evanston: -0.62%
Springfield: -0.89%
Despite the one-year declines, four of those cities — Champaign, Bloomington, Bolingbrook, and Evanston — actually saw population growth over the past five years.

Decatur experienced the largest decline in population year-over-year at 5.4%, the ninth-largest of the 610 cities SmartAsset reviewed. Other Illinois cities that experienced drops include Cicero (-1.11%), Aurora (-1.63%), and Schaumburg (-2.76%). Among Illinois cities, Aurora saw the largest five-year population decline at 13.1%, the sixth-largest on SmartAsset's list.

[Rick Powell]

These reported results are so far off what the US Census estimates, I am having trouble believing them. Yes, the west side of Elgin is showing good growth, but 8% a year is more than Kendall County at its "fastest growing county in the US" peak.

In Comparison, these are the 2023-2024 Census estimates recently released.
2023  2024  % growth

Elgin: 113,922 114,701 +0.68%
Arlington Heights: 75,066 75,596 +0.71%
Peoria: 111,195   111,696 +0.45%
Waukegan: 88,321 88,570 +0.28
Naperville: 151,166 153,124 +1.29%
Rockford: 146,799 147,486 +0.47%
Joliet: 151,081 151,837 +0.50%

I also looked at Decatur, and the census estimates are
68,824 68,763 -0.09%
A dip, but nowhere in the 5% a year range. It did fall 3.12% in the 4-year period from 2020 to 2024.

Looking at Elgin again, the US Census says it lost a little population before it gained it back and then some, so that the growth from 2020-2024 was actually on the order of +0.05%.

Source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-cities-and-towns.html

[edwaleni]

The data reported by WGN-TV was compiled by SmartAsset.

Per Wikipedia:

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