The Illinois Tollway just moved another piece of the I-490 puzzle into place. The agency advanced the next construction phase of the new tollway ringing O’Hare’s western edge, including a $177.9 million roadway and bridge package awarded to Dunnet Bay Construction between Supreme Drive and the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway.
Building O’Hare a back door
O’Hare has spent its whole life without a western entrance, forcing cargo and passenger traffic to loop around on local roads. I-490 fixes that. The new north-south tollway will connect to the Illinois Route 390 Tollway through a tri-level interchange, feeding directly into and out of the airport’s west side. You can see the full scope on our I-490 interchange project page: three miles of mainline, 16 ramps and 15 bridges.
A corridor with a lot of moving parts
Dunnet Bay is the prime on the western interchange work, with Stanley Consultants on design and STV managing construction on six of the ramps and bridges. Stitching it all together is V3 Companies, the corridor construction manager riding herd on more than 100 separate contracts across what adds up to a roughly $4 billion program, coordinating two Class I railroads, the FAA and the airport itself.
The payoff
For the freight operators staged west of O’Hare, the interchange is measured in miles cut from every run. The I-490/IL-390 interchange is scheduled to open by the end of 2027. After years of a corridor that looked more like a construction staging yard than a highway, drivers are finally close to seeing the ramps carry traffic.