The Dan Ryan Expressway

The Dan Ryan always gets me where I want to go and fast unless there is rush hour traffic. It is usually free and clear so I have no real complaints about it.

Oh, the Dan Ryan… so much to say, so little time, so just drive safely.

A beauty at night when the city is all lit up… you know you’re a Chicago native when you can appreciate the spectacle of it all…
…and then there’s that one asshole in their over-​priced pimped out (insert luxury car brand) zooming at 90 mph like they are on some version of «2F2 °F.»

The Ryan reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer adopts a highway and paints over the dashed lines… Soooo Luxurious
— Yep, it’s usually flowing pretty well, but some days… kabloowee! And some drivers…
Still though, I love it. Banked turns that’ll make you push the accelerator *JUST a wee bit harder, straightaways that look directly at the city and of course the (Sometimes Not So) Express Lanes.
At least it’s not like 90… might as well make that into a parking lot for adjacent neighborhoods.

The best part of the Dan Ryan is knowing that I’m close to home when I reach it!

One of the better expressways when driving through Chicago. There are plenty of lanes of traffic available, and it moves pretty fast as well.
There are only two problems that I have with this piece of pavement:
1) The Circle Interchange. Even on a Saturday or Sunday, traffic is lucky to be moving faster than 25 mph once you hit Roosevelt Road going northbound. If there was a way to connect the Dan Ryan express lanes with the Kennedy reversibles, this would definitely help alleviate the situations. As it is, it is a horrible bottleneck for through traffic, and a nightmare for northbound drivers wishing to go onto the Eisenhower or Congress Parkway.
2) Bad pavement over a portion of the road. I’m cruising along on a Saturday morning going southbound past Roosevelt, and all of the sudden — the road gets very bumpy! This continues until I get into the express lanes just before 31^st Street. The first time I drove this road, I thought that the car had a flat tire! It didn’t, but the road was still bumpy. The inbound pavement between 31^st and Roosevelt has the same problem.
Still, this expressway is not bad, and I definitely like driving it. ⁴⁄₅ stars

They got this one right, took a bit of doing, but it’s a great ride when heading S. Side. By comparison, the Ryan is by far the least painstaking of all Chicago Expressways and this has everything to do w. the newly constructed lane configurations.
You do get some crazy drivers on here, not nearly the amount you find on the Ike, but they’re out there, as they are on all Chicago roads. Probably my 2^nd/​3^rd favorite in terms of City Skyline view upon heading back into the City, which has to be considered when talking about about an inbound to Chi-​town roadway.

When I was growing up, «the Ryan» was a derogatory term used to express anger, frustration, and hatred. Then for awhile, it was absent from daily vocabulary as it underwent a rehabilitation that brought it down to one lane in each direction, effectively eliminating it from the travel plans and therefore the language of all Chicagoans. Poor tourists.
But since it fully reopened after the construction was completed, the Ryan is my favorite expressway in Chicago. Only 13 minutes to 93^rd? I love you, 94.