Elmhurst, Illinois Speed Traps

On North Avenue, heading east from York Road(between York and the 294), the speed limit drops to 30 mph. There are police cruisers hiding on side streets shooting radar.

At the intersection of York Road and the turn for the 290 East/Lake Road, late at night, there is usually an Elmhurst cruiser parked in a auto shop, sometimes headlights on, sometimes headlights off. Seems to use instant-on radar.

The cop will hide behind a clump of conifer trees on a driveway off of Butterfield Road. This driveway is about a half mile past the intersection of Butterfield and York Road. The signal light on the intersection of Butterfield will merge from two to one lane just after the signal light going towards the partol hidden behind the conifer trees. As the light turns green, the 6 or more cars stacked up behind the light will accelerate and merge into one lane just after the light. Due to the short merging lane, there will be times when one car or another may have to speed up or slow down to merge between cars and into one lane. The cop seems to know this and will hide behind the tree and ticket those who may have exceeded the posted speed limit by a few seconds. The posted speed limit is 35 mph.

This is one of the best known speedtraps in the West Suburbs, I’m surprised that it’s not already on this list. To be fair, North Ave is fairly narrow, packed with traffic and residential through this section, so the 35 MPH limit does not seem unrealistic. However, keep in mind that if you do speed here, you will get a ticket, not a warning. I was ticketed at 40 MPH (first time in 6 years) by a very apologetic officer. He obviously felt a little ridiculous giving me a ticket for going 5 over, but told me he was compeled to ticket all speeders by the Town Council. Be careful through this stretch: lots of side roads, lots of turn offs. It’s very eay to hide a police car and I’ve seen many people pulled over.

When exiting the St. Charles exit off of 294, you go from 55 to 30mph. Police like to park in the school parking lot about 1/2 mile up on the right hand side.