So tolls would be a way of financing the construction and maintenance, he said. He insisted that the highway is needed to help depressed parts of Southern Illinois. It's not as if we're a strong advocate for any particular route. Todd Hill of the state Transportation Department's planning and programming office said the three possible corridors were chosen because grading and land acquisition costs would be the least expensive for those routes of any other routes originally proposed. Bonds wouldn't be issued if a route was deemed too expensive to build, he said.
Cost estimates have yet to be compiled on the three proposed routes.
A full report on whether an expressway can be built and maintained using tolls and bond revenue is expected to be made public in the summer, Hill said. It is therefore not possible to determine individual parcels of land that could be impacted by the construction of a toll road. The trip between the Metro East area and Carbondale on existing roads now takes at least two hours. An expressway could cut 30 minutes or more off the trip and spur business development at interchanges along the toll road, Crow said. So that's the story on Interstate 24's potential extension.