Kennedy Expressway Reversible Lanes

Leading from O'Hare Airport to the heart of downtown Chicago is one of the most traveled traffic arteries in the Midwest, the John F. Kennedy Expressway. When the roadway was repaved and modernized, the Illinois Department of Transportation required an automated system that could handle the traffic demands of the 21st century. Divane Bros. Electric Co. met that challenge by assembling a top notch technical team and installing this complex, state-of-the-art traffic management system.

The project consists of 117 swing gates and 6 barriers that reverse the flow of automobile traffic on the express lanes of the Kennedy Expressway. The system includes power distribution equipment, Allen Bradley PLC control systems, and three types of communication equipment: 23 and 6 Gigabit Microwave, UHF radio, and Telephone. These systems are used to transmit data and commands between 4 “nodal” buildings along the roadway and the Illinois Department of Transportation’s District 1 headquarters where operations are monitored in the traffic control center.

Over 2000 field devices as well as roadway conditions are monitored and controlled with connections to PLC I/O cards in the nodal buildings by over 175 miles of multi-conductor cable. The tremendous amount of data gathered by the system is constantly monitored and using sophisticated fault-tolerant PLC programming logic. This constant monitoring means that problems are detected quickly, and minor, non-critical adverse conditions will not interrupt service. All this technology means that the lane change systems work reliably, 24/7, every day.