This closed-to-the public facility, located near the Eishenhower Expressway, is the data collection center for 170 miles of the state's freeways in a six-county area.
IDOT spokesman, Josh Kauffman, said the center's staff "designs, supervises, and maintains a network of 2,400 traffic detectors used to monitor expressway traffic in real time. The data is collected and processed through an Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS) that compiles data for traffic reports, travel time calculation and archives."
That means the hundreds of sensors placed on the on-ramps and off-ramps by IDOT engineers transmit traffic data back to the Oak Park facility, which uses the results to calculate travel times for use on electronic highway signs, as well as distribution to media outlets for traffic reports.