Chicago Lawmakers Want To Rename I-55 As ‘Barack Obama Expressway’
Democratic lawmakers from Chicago want a long stretch of the Interstate 55 (I-55), named for former President Barack Obama as the Barack Obama Expressway.
In a press release Wednesday, state Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) said he has been drafting a legislation to affect the name change.
Ford mentioned in the press release his proposal was to rename the 270-mile stretch of I-55 from the Tri-State Tollway to East St. Louis after Obama because the rest of I-55 — from Lakeshore Drive in Chicago to the Tri-State Tollway — had already been named the Stevenson Expressway for the Illinois Governor and two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and that name would not change.
Ford said he wanted to rename the expressway because of Obama's frequent trips between Springfield and Chicago when he was an Illinois State senator.
"Barack Obama adopted Illinois as his home, becoming a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago and a professor of law at the University of Chicago. Twenty years ago, on January 8, 1997, Barack Obama was sworn in as an Illinois state senator, his first public office. We can imagine that then state Senator Obama made many trips between Springfield and Chicago on Interstate 55, so it is very fitting that we rename Interstate 55 as the Barack Obama Expressway," Ford said.
Earlier last month, state Rep. Robert Martwick (D-Chicago) submitted the House Joint Resolution 0017 that would designate "the entirety of Interstate 294 of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways as the "President Barack Obama Tollway," state legislative records show.
Martwick's move to designate all of Interstate 294 after Obama was in "recognition of President Barack Obama’s dedication to public service as an Illinois State Senator, U.S. Senator from Illinois, and President of the United States of America," the resolution read.
Martwick's resolution was also co-sponsored by State reps. Marcus C. Evans, Jr. (D-Chicago) and Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria). It was introduced to the House's Tollway Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
Both Martwick and Ford have had competing plans for renaming different Illinois highways after the former president. But neither of them have indicated when they plan to introduce the legislation.
Obama was also ranked the 12th-best U.S. president overall in a new poll called Presidential Historians Survey conducted by C-SPAN ahead of Presidents Day
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