From Fort Wayne to Madison... Chicago/toll tips please! (Evanston: price, moving to)

[Leuco]

Hello all,

I'm moving to Madison, WI, from Fort Wayne, IN, and would love some tips for the first time driving up there, on Wednesday, to move.

We kind of want to avoid bad Chicago traffic and tolls, if possible.

We were thinking about taking 30 to 39/90, which adds ~1 hour to the trip, if google maps can be trusted, but seems to avoid most of the Chicago area, as well as most toll roads (though seems like we might hit one on 90 going into Wisconsin).

We've never really driven on toll roads before, and will be taking two vehicles.

Any alternate suggestions/additional tips?

Thanks!

[chet everett]

...unless you have some kind of aversion to saving time the few dollars that the you'll spend on tolls are absolutely worth it!

If you can get some decent walkin talkies that is huge help when in separate cars.

I would certainly try to time my travel to avoid the worst of rush hour, and be sure to use a good app for your smart phone like Waze that will provide appropriate turn by turn guidence but I really doubt that for a trip of this length you want to add an hour when for the price of literally just a few extra gallons of fuel you can use the tollway.

Technically you can probably use the "open road tolling" if you have either a transponder OR utilize the online payment system that is provided at the Toll Authority web site.

I would not recommend using the Skyway, that really only makes sense if you are heading into Chicago itself or up the Edens to the south end of the North Shore communities like Evanston or Wilmette...

Getting to Madison WI is actually a nice drive so long as you time things to avoid commuter traffic -- ideally travel on a weekend(but sounds like you're coming midweek, so just leave Ft. Wayne nice and early that you will be past the choke points of the northwest suburbs before commuter, you'll be starting in Eastern time zone so that gives you an automatic hour of "lead time", I'd aim to be leave as close to dawn as you can). Just follow the routing that links 80/94 to 294 and then 290 to 90. If the app does not automatically chose this route you can "add a destination" for "Hinsdale Oasis, Hinsdale IL" (not a bad spot to use the restrooms either, though it is cheaper to fuel up in Indiana)... You can get a breakfast sandwich from the McDonalds -- http://www.illinoistollway.com/roadw...oasis-hinsdale



It is much faster.