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Illinois notes
mgk920:
I drove down to Chicago yesterday (Tuesday, 2012-09-11) and noticed a few interesting items.
-IDOT has added the new MUTCD yellow outlines to the black 'target' background frames around its overhead mast-arm signal heads along US 41 (Skokie Highway) in Lake County. Although I would have much preferred that the feds used white instead of yellow, as is the standard in Europe, they do look pretty nice and do make the signal heads much more visible, especially at night. It will be easy to tell that there are signals at an intersection should the power fail at night, too.
-Chicagoland is lousy with Clearwiew, although a limited few FHWA BGSs still exist on the expressways, including some button copy.
-The badly overdue rebuilding of the north-south part of Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago is well under way with the forms for the southernmost couple of blocks now being constructed. The parts farther north that are done look *fantastic* and it should be a great drive when all is done. I'm not sure if it is expected to be done yet this year, but it might be close.
-Is the City of Chicago cutting back on the number of streetlights on their streets? :-o From the Sears Skydeck, some streets looked dimmer and less intensively lit than I remember the last time that I was there, even though those streets still used high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps.
Mike
sipes23:
I saw the earthmovers headed up the hill in Algonquin yesterday. Work has begun on the IL 31 bypass around downtown Algonquin. It is supposed to cause lane closures on IL 62, but I've not seen them yet. Work should finish in 2014.
http://www.algonquin.org/egov/docs/1293659786178.htm
I also had the chance encounter with the IL 60/83 closure at the CN tracks in Mundelein last night. If you're familiar with the area, finding a sensible detour should be easy enough. Otherwise consult Google maps. The suggested detour looks pretty rough.
http://www.lakecountyil.gov/Transportation/Roadwork/ConstDocuments/ILRte60_ILRte83_EJ_ERRPressRelease.pdf
SSOWorld:
Mike - They are putting in HIDs all over and are now preferring flat bottoms of the heads over the jutting out covers they have used forever. I don't think they reduced the density of lamp posts. Recall they had those lights on two streets for some time (1 being LSD).
I saw the yellow borders on IL 173 traffic light heads.
--- Quote from: mgk920 on September 12, 2012, 02:19:57 PM ---I drove down to Chicago yesterday (Tuesday, 2012-09-11) and noticed a few interesting items.
-IDOT has added the new MUTCD yellow outlines to the black 'target' background frames around its overhead mast-arm signal heads along US 41 (Skokie Highway) in Lake County. Although I would have much preferred that the feds used white instead of yellow, as is the standard in Europe, they do look pretty nice and do make the signal heads much more visible, especially at night. It will be easy to tell that there are signals at an intersection should the power fail at night, too.
-Chicagoland is lousy with Clearwiew, although a limited few FHWA BGSs still exist on the expressways, including some button copy.
-The badly overdue rebuilding of the north-south part of Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago is well under way with the forms for the southernmost couple of blocks now being constructed. The parts farther north that are done look *fantastic* and it should be a great drive when all is done. I'm not sure if it is expected to be done yet this year, but it might be close.
-Is the City of Chicago cutting back on the number of streetlights on their streets? :-o From the Sears Skydeck, some streets looked dimmer and less intensively lit than I remember the last time that I was there, even though those streets still used high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps.
Mike
--- End quote ---
http://wackerdrive.net/project-schedule/
End of 2012.
sipes23:
I ran across some construction on IL176 in Wauconda that didn't have an immediately apparent purpose. Some digging turned up that there is a bicycle tunnel being put under the road. Maybe I need to check out their bike trail system over there too. In the spring.
Lake County has a very thorough website for their transportation department. Here are the construction projects.
http://www.lakecountyil.gov/TRANSPORTATION/Pages/ConstructionProjects.aspx
Mdcastle:
In some areas they're replacing high pressure sodium vapor with metal halide too, which looks "dimmer" too me even at apparently equivalent lumens. I've yet to see an LED in chicagoland.
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