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| City poised to ease lakefront trail bottleneck with 'Navy Pier Flyover' | |
| Feb 16, 2011 | |
| Chicago Tribune | |
| Pertains to Lakefront Path, Chicago | |
| Chicago would take a major step toward easing one of the worst chokepoints on its lakefront trail if, as expected, the city’s plan commission on Thursday approves construction of a modernistic overpass that would sweep across the Chicago River. The project, called the Navy Pier Flyover, is designed to fix a long-standing trail bottleneck that crams pedestrians, cyclists and in-line skaters onto the lower level of the Lake Shore Drive Bridge over the river. North of the bridge, trail users are forced to jockey for space with cars at Illinois and Grand Avenues, leading to honking horns and worse. “This section is without question one of the most heavily used on the lakefront path,” said Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation. The city’s aims, he said, are to improve safety and traffic flow—and to build something that’s more than a mundane piece of infrastructure. The flyover would extend from land south of the Chicago River to Jane Addams Memorial Park on the north. Portions of its side-by-side lanes (above) would cantilever outwards from the east side of Lake Shore Drive. Sloping, stand-alone viaducts (left) would lead to the overpass. A spur would run east to Navy Pier, the state’s most visited tourist attraction. Portions of the overpass would run through two of the Lake Shore Drive Bridge’s Art Deco bridge tender houses, Steele said. Because of that, city officials are submitting the design to the Illinois State Historic Preservation Agency for review, he said. About $34 million in federal and state funds have been secured for the project, which has an estimated construction cost of $40 million to $45 million, Steele said. Ideally, construction would start on the project’s north segment (left) in the first half of 2012, he said. The architects for that segment are the Chicago firm of Muller Muller. Before construction halted on the nearby, now-dead Chicago Spire skyscraper project in 2008, Spire architect Santiago Calatrava had designed his own version of the flyover (below). It included one of his harp-like bridges. For more information, here is the Department of Transportation's detailed preview (http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdot/NavyPierFlyover_PublicPresentation_July2010.pdf) of the design that is expected to be voted on Thursday by the Chicago Plan Commission. The commission meets at 1 p.m. Thursday at City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. (Renderings courtesy of Chicago Department of Transportation; model photo from Chicago Spire presentation to Friends of the Parks) |
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