Chicago Major Streets and Roadways
In the city of Chicago, the city planners take their work seriously and observers take note with the broad and well-kept streets. When laying out the streets in the city, administrators have made use of the street grid pattern. This particular pattern stemmed from the original plan for the city of Chicago when it was still a small city. The arterial streets in the city were originally conceived as part of the section lines of the city's Public Land Survey System.
With time, the arterial streets were laid down in such a way that there are eight streets to a mile in one orientation and another set of 16 streets in another direction. Generally, the grid system of laying out the streets in Chicago ensures that there is a primary street at each half mile and this corresponds to the length of four city blocks. There is a major secondary street in every half a mile, and some of the streets are named instead of being numbered, and this applies in particular to the streets that are in a north-south orientation in the city. However, in the suburbs, the streets running from the east to west are numbered instead of adopting the naming system used in the city.
Major Freeways, Highways, and Streets
- I-94 - Cuts through the center of the city N to S
- I-290 - Branches from center to W
- I-55 - Branches from center to SW
- I-355 - Runs N to S on W side of city
- I-294 - Parallels I-355 to the E and runs N to S on W side of city
- I-57 - Branches from I-94 to S
- I-80 - Runs W to E on S end of city
- I-90 - From NW to Center to SE