Epstein’s Greg Osborne, PE Interviewed on the Plan to Expand Chicago’s 606 Trail

Yesterday (September 13^th), Epstein's director of civil engineering, Greg Osborne, PE, was interviewed in DNAinfo Chicago, a leading online news source covering Chicago real estate developments, politics, entertainment, etc., about the proposed expansion of the 606 pedestrian and bicycle trail under the Kennedy Expressway, over the Chicago River and into the old A. Finkl and Sons industrial site.

Greg is uniquely qualified to discuss the challenges of designing elevated paths having served as our design team leader for the Riverview Bridge, a 1000-foot long, 16-span curved structure that when complete in 2017 will cross the Chicago River at Addison and then link up with an existing trail at California Park, just south of Irving Park Road.

Renderings of Riverview Bridge

In this DNAInfo piece Greg talks about how the expansion of the very popular 606 will be more complicated due to the fact that unlike the existing trail the infrastructure is not in place for the expansion, and the addition would also have to involve and gain approvals from numerous public agencies, many of which have unique width and height requirements for trail structures. Additionally, Greg also spoke about the funding (public vs private) for the expansion would impact that speed at which the 606 expansion would take and if this expansion is funded by the public the project could take nearly 8 years to complete.

Here's a link (goo.gl/PG16r0) to the entire DNAinfo Chicago article which also includes comments from individuals from the Active Transportation Alliance and the Trust for Public Land as well as Alderman Brian Hopkins.