It’s been a lot of years that cyclists, rollerbladers, walkers, people pushing prams, and just anyone who enjoys walking along Chicago’s lakefront have been waiting for the Navy Pier Flyover to be completed.
While northern sections have been done and open to the public for some time, the key bottleneck in the whole lakefront parade — the Lake Shore Drive Bridge — is still a work in progress.
Loop Spy Joel sent in these photos showing how far CDOT has come with the project.
In the photograph above you can see the steel and concrete ramp that will one day carry wheels and heels over DuSable Park between Jane Addams Park and the bridge. And in the photograph below, you can see said ramp almost, but not quite, connecting to the bridge where the lakefront path will burrow through the 1930’s bridgehouses which bookend the movable span.
This project is a year overdue, so we won’t speculate on when it will be done. Fingers have pointed at everything from unexpected engineering work to difficulty corralling the right flavors of your tax dollars to pay for the project. But surely, it will be done eventually. It’s not like construction projects in Chicago ever get abandoned, leaving a massive hole in the ground next to the Lake Shore Drive Bridge. Oh, wait.
Location: North Lake Shore Drive at the Chicago River, The Loop
Editor founded the Chicago Architecture Blog in 2003, after a long career in journalism. He can be reached at chicagoarchitectureinfo@gmail.com.
July 24, 2019
Yes I think we should RIP out all the parking meters, and throw them in the lake,or take the parking money and build a first class bridge,