This is far and away the most requested feature I have done so far. The most stiking feature of this area is most likely the 'flyover' stack ramps serving the 'left turns' from the Tri-State Tollway to the Northwest Tollway.
The 'Rosemont' interchange has served as the main entrance to O'Hare International Airport and as a major crossroads of the near northwest suburbs and Chicago's far northwest side for over 35 years, and carries massive amounts of traffic. It is still essentially in its origional form, with only minor tweaking of some of the ramps done in recent years to improve the traffic flow, in addition to the widening of the Tri-State Tollway from 6 to 8 lanes. The barrier tollgates for the Tollways are set to collect their tolls as one leaves the interchange area, the ones on the Tri-State are off the map both north and south.
Little 'quicky' facts...
*The partial 'cloverleaf' interchange on I-190 between the Tri-State Tollway and the Kennedy merge (it is with Des Plaines River Rd) was origionally a full cloverleaf. It was cut back to its current form when the Chicago Transit Authority's O'Hare (Blue Line) extension was built during the early-mid 1980s, this to allow enough room to build a 'park and ride' lot for the Des Plaines River Rd station. This rapid transit trackage uses the median of the Kennedy Expressway and I-190 to connect the O'Hare terminal with the rest of the CTA system. That is a terminal shop/yard facility for that line between Des Plaines River Rd and the Tri-State. There are 'middle burner' proposals to extend this line further into the northwest suburbs, possibly ending in the Woodfield area of Schaumburg. Similar reconfigurations were done at the next interchange to the east (Cumberland Av) for the same purpose.
*There are two seperate ways to get from the NB Tri-State to the NWB Northwest Tollway. The second connection is there mainly to allow traffic from the airport to go to the northwest suburbs and beyond.
*A new connection from the NB Tri-State to WB I-190 (to the Airport) eliminated a nasty 'crossover' weave on the NB Tri-State. The former ramp grade is visible, and fed into the SEB Northwest Tollway and SB Tri-State Tollway to WB I-190 ramp tollgate.
*A little bit of trivia, the *first* private advertising sign one sees after leaving the airport area on I-190 is the little 'Wisconsin Central Ltd.' shield on the railroad bridge.
*Speaking of the railroad, there is now a 'METRA' commuter rail station on the Wisconsin Central mainline between I-190 and the Northwest Tollway. It serves the airport, and is connected to the terminals via a nifty, self controlled 'peoplemover'.
*There has been some reconfigurating done to I-190 west of Mannheim Rd to improve access to/from various parts of the airport terminal area. This work was done after the source maps were produced.
*The main access road to the O'Hare Airport terminal area origionally went due east-west (it went due east from where the 'I-190' shield is). The 'kink' to the south was built when the grounds were expanded, allowing room for the construction of a new runway. This likely occurred either before or when the interchange and the rest of the freeways/Tollways were built.
*Before their current numbers were assigned, I-90 through here was 'IL 194', and I-190 was 'IL 594'. This renumbering took place in the very late 1970s.
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