In this year’s installment of its annual Highway Boondoggles report, U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group warn of billions of dollars in proposed spending on unnecessary highway projects that would divide our communities, deprive transit of scarce funds, and pollute our air and water. Below is the third of seven installments detailing these harmful projects. It’s our annual December donation drive. Please give from the heart (and wallet!) by clicking here. Thanks. Illinois officials have budgeted $206 million for a new interchange on I-57 that would take drivers onto a road through undeveloped farmland 44 miles south of Chicago in Will County, Illinois. The project has been deemed “The Exit to Nowhere” by the Illinois Policy Center, as the destination of the proposed interchange is an unbuilt airport which itself is an object of controversy. The project also represents a large unnecessary cost at a time when key local transportation priorities are in desperate need of funding, and will require paving over rural areas of farmland and floodplains.