Round 2 of road work along Route 20 in Elgin

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Dirt is bulldozed in the median strip along U.S. Route 20 in Elgin Wednesday. Work is wrapping up on Rte. 20 repaving and more work beginning, to rearraange the whole intersectioin of Rte. 20, Weld Road, McLean Bldv., Shepard Drive and Fleetwood Drive. November 2, 2011 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: December 4, 2011 11:09AM

ELGIN — Just as drivers along Route 20 through Elgin were getting ready to say “Whew!” about the near completion of this summer’s repaving project there, the next three-year construction project began along the highway this week.

Guy Tridgell, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the shuffling of load after load of soil that began Monday is the first step in the rearrangement of the whole interchange involving Route 20, McLean Boulevard, Weld Road, Fleetwood Drive, Shepard Drive and Lillian Street.

By the time that whole project is finished in fall 2014, drivers will move between Route 20 and McLean — a main southwest side thoroughfare — via a layout traffic planners refer to as a “single-point urban interchange” instead of the presently used diamond-shaped arrangement of exit and entrance ramps.

Plote Construction Inc. of Hoffman Estates will do the work that began Monday and continues through fall 2012. In the first step, semitrailer trucks are loading soil from a 20-foot-tall pile at the southwest corner of Weld and McLean and are dumping it into the ditchlike median strip between eastbound and westbound Route 20. That will make the median flat enough to build crossover lanes between eastbound and westbound traffic.

Once the crossover lanes are in place, traffic will be shuffled to one side of the Route 20 bridge over McLean while that bridge is widened and two retaining walls are built under it.

In the coming 12 months, Plote also will straighten the present curve along Shepard Drive between Elgin Lanes and Weld Road, and realign and widen the intersection of Shepard with Fleetwood Drive. That preliminary work will cost the state’s taxpayers $9.8 million, paid for as part of the $31 billion statewide Illinois Jobs Now! capital-projects program.

Tridgell said the main work on the realigning will begin in fall 2012 and continue through fall 2014, at a cost of $30.8 million. That will include replacing the entire bridge over McLean (one side at a time); installing new traffic signals, streetlights and bike path/sidewalks; and realigning the whole interchange into a layout that is expected to reduce traffic backups and waiting time at red lights.

One price for the new layout is that the present connection between McLean and Weld Road will disappear. To get to and from Weld from McLean, drivers after 2014 will have to travel via Shepard Drive and Fleetwood Drive.

Tridgell said work will continue right through the winter, weather permitting. He said there will be occasional daytime lane closures along Route 20, Shepard, Fleetwood and Weld, and possible nighttime lane closures along McLean and Route 20.

Meanwhile, other contractors are finishing up the repaving of Route 20 between Shales Parkway and Longcommon Parkway. But one part of that is running behind schedule — replacing the elevated exit ramp connecting eastbound Route 20 to Larkin Avenue. That was supposed to have been finished in late October. Tridgell said that now will be completed about Nov. 11.

He said the resurfacing already is complete in some areas and those have been completely opened to four-lane traffic. Concrete was poured on the inside lanes of the Fox River bridge Wednesday, so that section also will be fully opening soon, he said, with the entire repaving project to be finished by Nov. 11.