Illinois Tollway Executive Director Brian McPartlin has announced that he will be leaving the agency on Oct. 24 to take a position in the private sector. McPartlin joined the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority in 2003 as chief of administration and was named executive director in 2006.
In 2003, McPartlin joined the new administration to lead an effort to increase accountability, enhance business efficiencies and improve customer service at the Toll Authority. By 2004, improvements at the agency were acknowledged by editorial boards, legislators and even former critics, and with the support of Gov. Rod Blagojevich the Toll Authority adopted its long-range capital program “Open Roads for a Faster Future” to rebuild the nearly 50-year-old tollway system and reduce travel times for motorists. With this new direction, in 2005 the agency launched its Congestion-Relief Program with the goal of rebuilding or restoring the majority of the system, widening or adding lanes where most needed, converting 20 mainline toll plazas to barrier-free open-road tolling and extending I-355 south to I-80 in Will County.
Since then, under McPartlin's leadership the capital program has been updated to include $6.3 billion in work through 2016, and the Illinois Tollway completed the systemwide conversion to open-road tolling in 2006, opened the new 12.5-mile south extension of the I-355 Veterans Memorial Tollway in 2007 and is midway through rebuilding or widening the system, including the majority of the Tri-State Tollway (I-94/I-294/I-80), the eastern leg of the Reagan Memorial Tollway (I-88) and the northern end of the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (I-90). The Congestion-Relief Program is on schedule and on budget.
McPartlin is joining McDonough Associates engineering/architectural firm as a vice president. Before joining the Illinois Tollway, McPartlin served as the U.S. secretary of education's regional representative, the regional office of the General Services Administration, and in the executive office of the president of the United States. Before his service at the White House, McPartlin served in an array of other positions in Illinois state government, among them the office of the Cook County assessor, the Illinois attorney general's office and the office of the Illinois secretary of state.
