page_title: Interstate 355
section_title: Opening
hierarchical_section_title: Interstate 355 / History / Opening
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking southbound onto Interstate 355 from the Illinois Prairie Path.
context_page_description: Interstate 355, also known as the Veterans Memorial Tollway, is an Interstate Highway and tollway in the western and southwest suburbs of Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois. Like most other toll roads in the northeastern portion of the state, I-355 is maintained by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. I-355 runs from I-80 in New Lenox north to I-290 in Itasca, a distance of 32.5 miles. With the exception of a four-mile expansion in 2009, from U.S. Route 34 to 75th Street, the highway is six lanes wide for its entire length.
  The tollway authority opened I-355 as the North–South Tollway in 1989 to ease congestion on Illinois Route 53, a parallel two-lane state highway in central DuPage County. Initially, I-355 ran from I-55 north to I-290. The new highway helped cut travel times for commuters traveling north and south in the county. According to commercial real estate developers at the time, the new tollway also opened the western suburbs of Chicago to commercial and industrial development.
  On November 11, 2007, the tollway authority opened a southern extension of I-355, which runs 12.5 miles between I-55 and I-80.
context_section_description: I-355 opened at the stroke of midnight on December 24, 1989. As a Christmas gift, the first two days of operation were free. Because of lower traffic counts at the north and south ends of the highway and lack of construction money, tollway officials built the road with four lanes from North Avenue (IL 64) to the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (I-88) on the north end, and around I-55 on the south end. As early as 1991, tollway officials had drawn up plans to widen the highway to three lanes in each direction. Widening from North Avenue to Butterfield Road (IL 56) took place in 1995. The old lines marking the former shoulder can still be seen in the right lane as a result of the tollway authority's attempt to grind them away.
  After the new road opened, congestion decreased considerably on nearby north–south arteries. The DuPage County Division of Transportation calculated that congestion had decreased on IL 53 by 20%, and the volume of cars on nearby north–south roads IL 53, IL 59 and IL 83 had decreased. On IL 53 between Ogden Avenue and Roosevelt Road, traffic counts sank from 21,400 to 11,800 vehicles per day. In addition, traffic on the exit ramp from the Tri-State Tollway (I-294) to I-55 dropped 10 percent in 12 months. Drivers also reported decreases in travel time from one end of the county to the other of up to 40 minutes. However, the opening of the tollway also greatly increased congestion on I-290 near the northern terminus. A construction project in the summer months of 1990 widened I-290 just north of the tollway, at a cost of $2–2.5 million (equivalent to $34.7 million–43.3 million in 2018).
  In spite of the apparent success of the tollway opening, traffic counts and projected toll revenues were initially lower than projected, with an estimated 65,000 motorists per day traveling along the tollway, generating $55,000–65,000 (equivalent to $95,000–113,000 in 2018) in daily toll revenues. In addition, a spate of lawsuits were filed regarding the payment of contractors and subcontractors. Numerous liens filed by subcontractors against the tollway were settled in June at a cost of $10.1 million (equivalent to $17.5 million in 2018). The tollway authority released an additional $1 million (equivalent to $1.64 million in 2018) in May 1992 to further settle claims made by the general contractor, entering arbitration soon afterwards to settle another $1.6–27 million (equivalent to $2.62 million–44.3 million in 2018)) the contractor claimed it was owed. By 2005, average annual daily traffic values had risen to a range of 77,400 to 170,200 vehicles per day.
  As early as 1989, the tollway authority had discussed implementing automatic toll collection across the entire system to relieve congestion caused by traffic stopping at mainline toll barriers. The tollway authority began testing I-Pass, the tollway system's electronic payment method, on the entire stretch of I-355 in 1993 at various tollbooths; by September 1994, every plaza on I-355 accepted I-Pass. By 1998, the tollway authority had installed dedicated I-Pass lanes (lanes specifically set aside for electronic toll collections) at both mainline toll barriers. In 1999, I-355 became the first tollway to receive I-Pass Express Lanes (also known as open road tolling, or ORT). With the installation of the express lanes, vehicles with I-Pass could be tolled at highway speeds of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h). In 2005, the tollway authority widened the express lanes from two lanes to three lanes in each direction. This allowed the number of express lanes to match the number of travel lanes on the tollway.
  Unlike the other tollways in the tollway system at the time, there were no oases on the Veterans Memorial Tollway when it was opened. This is primarily due to the widespread access to food and fuel throughout the western suburbs when construction began in the late 1980s. When the southern extension was opened in Will County in 2007, that segment of road also did not have any oases.
caption: I-355 at the Illinois Prairie Path, looking south towards Downers Grove in the distance
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