This page details some of the most infamous days that has ever happened on 270 in Illinois.

August 10-14, 1994

Ask anyone that lived in Madison County, IL during this time frame about these dates and they will say "you didn't miss a damn thing" and they won't say anything else.  Usually when a bridge across the Mississippi River in Madison County closes, it is normally the Clark and/or McKinley bridges.  However, the law of averages catches up on the night of August 10, 1994 and it was nasty.  Sometime between 9:30 and 10 PM that night, four pins broke at one of the expansion joints on the westbound side of the COR Bridge (over the Mississippi River), which resulted in a pavement dislocation of three to four inches.  The westbound lanes of the bridge were closed around 10 PM -- the word spreads to the St. Louis media outlets in less than 15 minutes because one of of the tv stations broke the news right before weather during the ensuing 10 PM newscast.

The ensuing morning rush hour turned out to be one of the worst ever -- even the Flood of 93 related problems the previous August did not compare to the morning of August 11.  55/70 was backed up all the way to Route 111 until 10 AM that day, and traffic to the Clark Bridge was backed up for miles, due in part of Route 143 construction and ironically, the demolition of the old Clark Bridge.  (The Berm Highway approach was not complete during this time, and the only way to the bridge from the south and east was to use Henry Street from Broadway in downtown Alton.)

The nightmare continued until Sunday afternoon, August 14.  The lanes on the bridge were reopened that afternoon around 2 PM.  Rumors were flying around prior to the reopening that there was more worshippers attending church that morning than usual, and a woman that was on the bridge just minutes before the westbound lanes were closed told me the shock she encountered after turning on the 10 PM news to watch the weather while at church.

The return to normalcy did not come without a price, however.  The ensuing Friday, IDOT pulled off surprise lane closures on the bridge to X-ray the structure.  The Alton Telegraph published the results about two weeks after the pictures were taken, and the locals simply did everything not to read the article.  Less than two years after this episode happened, a major reconstruction project started from Lilac to 255 that lasted for 31 months and caused several headaches for motorists.

Northwestern University has snapped a few pictures of the infamous pin replacement project.  Nothing pretty, and this project was apparently due to the events on the night of 8/10/94.

The Summer of 1975

On July 7, 1975, the old Clark Bridge in Alton was closed to traffic for the next six months due to deck replacement.  The closure forced Alton residents to rely on 270 to get across the river, and the closure cut off eastern St. Charles County from Illinois.  The situation made 2 hour trips from Alton to St. Louis during rush hours very routine, and traffic was backed up from Route 111 to Riverview on a regular basis.  Although the Clark Bridge was reopened by Christmas, the Summer of 1976 was no better than 1975, due to complications that happened because of  cold winter of 75-76.

The infamous Summer of 1975, if it did anything, forced IDOT to get off their asses about the Berm Highway [then IL 3] project to relieve the traffic from Alton that had to maneuver through the infamous "islands" of East Alton just to get to 270.

February 28, 1997

This is a classic example when something goes wrong on an alternate route at the worst possible time:  Friday afternoon right before rush hour.  A tanker truck overturned while making the turn onto the Clark Bridge from the Illinois side about 2:30 PM, closing the bridge for 10 hours.  This resulted in massive traffic backups in the Alton/River Bend area, and since the Clark Bridge was shut down, traffic had to go to 270.  Well, with 270 down to one lane at the Mississippi River due to construction, it was obvious that problems would happen.  Traffic backed up from 170 to 255 as the afternoon progressed and would remain this way until the wee hours of Saturday morning.  Motorists had to sit for 2 to 3 hours trying to get across the river on this cold February afternoon.  The Clark Bridge did not reopen until midnight due to the cleanup process.  Fortunately, no explosion happened as a result of this accident; but several events held nearby had late starts because of the traffic on 270 and 143 tied everyone up.

The front page, top story headline of the Alton Telegraph on March 1 had it fitting: "Traffic Nightmare".  It was a classic "Frightful Friday".  The best news out of this was that nothing went wrong on 270 during this entire ordeal, despite the fact the construction zone was accident-prone at any time of the day.