Ground will soon be broken to widen Route 13. However, it will take FIVE fucking years and nine figures to add 12 piddley feet of concrete to each side of 13 between Marion and Carterville. And they only need to add concrete — It’s not a freeway grade road, it’s just four lane divided with a grass median, with frequent grade crossings and stoplights (Think: 94 in St. Charles County between 70 and 40, not counting Page Avenue Extension concurrency.) IIRC, there is only one overpass for 13 in that stretch over a creek, therefore only two bridges that need to be let out a bit. Why so fucking expensive and fucking long? Then again, this is old hat for Illinois.
As it is, it won’t help me one bit, because my daily commute is from Carterville to Carbondale and back — that stretch will be widened in the far distant future, and is not part of this project.. By that time, I’ll probably have moved away from here, hopefully back to St. Louis or some other sane state. It will actually hinder me because going back to STL from Carterville means 13 east to I-57 north. That’s the part that’s going to be worked on for the next five years, which means one-lane stretches in each direction, low speed limits and a snails pace just to get back to Marion.
Looks like I might have to learn to love US 51 north out of Carbondale up to I-64.
If you ask me, what needs to be done is to convert 13 from I-57 in Marion to Carbondale to an interstate highway grade road. Use the existing main lanes of 13 for the freeway lanes, take out the lights and cross-grades. There are already outer roads in and around Carterville, make those one-way on each side, extend those from Marion to Carbondale, as frontage roads for the freeway. Any freeway exits would be slip ramps to the frontage roads, which would meet the surface streets at-grade (Think: I-44 between the Meramec River and Highway 141 in Fenton). There are two ways they could end the freeway in Carbondale: (1) Join the freeway and frontage lanes going westbound before the US 51 stoplight in the center of Carbondale, and vice versa for eastbound after it, or (2) Dogleg the freeway lanes down so that they flow right into the entrance to SIUC (Southern Illinois University – Carbondale), where almost everyone who goes west on 13 from Marion winds up going anyway, let the frontage roads flow as the Route 13 lanes do now, right through the middle of Carbondale as one-way surface streets, until they meet back to to go to Murphysboro.
The freeway could be an I-57 spur, I-x57 where x is an odd number. I see no need for anything more than SIU to I-57. 13 east of 57 to Harrisburg isn’t that busy, and 13 west of Carbondale to Murphysboro isn’t too busy either; both stretches are four lane divided and are fine that way.
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2009/09/02/front_page/29343728.txt
https://countenance.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/i-can-understand-the-confusion/