Fix Route 120.
From Volo to Grayslake, without a bypass.

It repeats the dangers of existing Route 120 instead of fixing them

The tortured path and lane restrictions of today’s Route 120 would remain, and a high-speed bypass close to neighborhoods would bring new hazards for the people who live there. The bypass is proposed for 40 mph, and speed decides who survives a crash: a person on foot struck at 23 mph has about a 1-in-10 risk of dying, and at 42 mph the risk is about 1 in 2.

It cuts through environmentally sensitive open space we cannot replace

The bypass would destroy or threaten some of the region’s most significant natural areas, including two Illinois Nature Preserves, two areas listed on the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (INAI) for their statewide conservation significance, Almond Marsh and Kettle Grove forest preserves, the Big Sag Wetlands, the Liberty Prairie Reserve, Mill and Manitou Creeks, habitat for 43 federal- and state-protected threatened and endangered species, and 325 acres of wetlands, most of them very high quality. Most of the bypass would also pave through flood hazard areas, which, combined with destroying nearby wetlands, would likely lead to more flooding in the area. Destroying these undisturbed lands and waters is worse than adding to the impacts on lands and waters Route 120 already affects, yet IDOT’s simplistic comparison scores them equally.

It is unaffordable

The bypass is a financial and political dead end. It can be expected to cost close to a colossal $2 billion, based on the estimates the Illinois Tollway produced when it considered the project as part of the now-defunct Route 53 extension. In fact, that projection may be an understatement: it was made at least seven years ago, and costs rise with inflation. No funding source for this kind of cost has been identified, and a multitude of previously authorized transportation projects across the state are already competing for limited taxpayer dollars.

A bypass would not just cost billions to build. It would add miles of new highway that taxpayers must maintain forever. As the nonprofit Strong Towns puts it, “Every new lane mile we build adds to our backlog of future transportation costs.”

It leaves the real problems in place

IDOT counted 1,263 crashes on Route 120 from 2017 to 2021, and more than half were rear-end crashes, the kind that stop-and-go traffic produces at signals, rail crossings and lane merges. Even the 2009 plan that first drew the bypass expected the existing road to keep carrying heavy local traffic. A bypass would mean years of construction and a second road to maintain, without solving the problems on existing Route 120.

When trains block Route 120, they block ambulances too

Canadian National freight trains cross Route 120 at grade just west of Route 83, and a stopped train can block several Grayslake crossings at once. Grayslake’s police and fire chiefs have warned for years that blocked crossings delay emergency response.

In August 2026, paramedics on their way to a Grayslake woman in labor were stuck behind a train that cut off the east side of town at both Route 120 (Belvidere Road) and Center Street. A rookie police officer, six hours into her first shift, delivered the baby before the ambulance could get there. Mother and baby are fine. The next emergency may not end so well.

It keeps happening. On July 30, 2026, a stalled CN freight blocked the Center Street, Route 120 and Route 83 crossings for about four hours. When a crash came in at Route 120 and Atkinson Road, an ambulance had to come from the fire district’s second station because the train held up crews at the first. On October 19, after a pedestrian incident on the same line, those three crossings were closed for hours during the evening rush, with drivers sent to the Lake Street crossing and Metra service halted through Grayslake.

A bypass to the south would leave the Route 120 crossing exactly as it is. A grade separation would fix it.

It is unnecessary, and the population projections are ridiculously high

Adding a bypass would create what traffic planners call “induced demand,” or what we like to call “if you build it, they will come.” IDOT’s own traffic modeling shows that this $2 billion project would increase the number of cars per day, not decrease it. Instead, fixing existing Route 120 with a grade separation at Route 83 (an overpass or underpass at the train tracks), some additional lanes, improved intersections including roundabouts, safety improvements, traffic demand management and technology can relieve congestion significantly, at a fraction of the cost and without destroying our communities or environment.

Opportunity cost

There is an opportunity cost to even leaving the bypass in the plan. IDOT’s own internal documents, which we received through our Freedom of Information Act work, show that IDOT does not plan to invest in improving existing Route 120 while its pie-in-the-sky bypass remains a possibility, however remote. This is what has happened for decades: IDOT refuses to fix existing Route 120, to try to make traffic so unbearable that people will clamor for the bypass. It hasn’t worked. It just blocks investment that would ease our ongoing congestion.

When the Illinois Department of Transportation did not fulfill its obligation to provide us with public information when board member Evan Craig submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the spring of 2024, he filed a lawsuit with our support and assistance and in consultation with us. His suit won summary judgment, and we are awaiting final settlement. To date, we have received and studied over 40,000 documents in total in our Freedom of Information Act work on the 120 project.

It is the last piece of an old tollway plan

The Route 120 bypass has long been tied to the Route 53/120 tollway that the Illinois Tollway shelved in 2019, and was at times planned as its east–west arm. Planners at the time noted that if Route 53 became an expressway, Route 120 would need to be one too. The tollway is gone, and the land bought for it is becoming a greenway. Its leftover highway arm does not need to survive it.