Interstate 57 (I-57): Both Segments, Length, Crashes and Bridges

How long is I-57?

The FHWA Route Log gives I-57 489.20 miles: 108.30 in Arkansas, 22.33 in Missouri and 358.57 in Illinois. The Sikeston to Chicago road makes up 380.90 of those miles and the Arkansas road the rest.

Wikipedia's figures run longer, 386.12 miles for the original road and 122.80 for the Arkansas piece, or 508.92 together. Interstate Guide has the Arkansas piece at 122.34 miles, so the Route Log row for that state comes up about 14 miles short of both. In Illinois the Route Log figure trails Wikipedia's 364.16 by exactly 5.59 miles, which is the length of the stretch I-57 shares with I-70 at Effingham. That shared pavement appears to be left out of both routes' Illinois rows; I-70's 138.74 miles also stop short of it. The crash rates below use Wikipedia's 364.16 miles for Illinois, which puts those shared miles back, and leave Arkansas out.

Where I-57 starts and ends

The original road starts at a cloverleaf with I-55 in Sikeston, Missouri. It heads east alongside US 60 toward Charleston, then bends northeast and crosses the Mississippi River into Cairo, Illinois. From Cairo it climbs north past Marion, Mount Vernon, Effingham, Mattoon, Champaign, Rantoul, Paxton and Kankakee. The last miles in Chicago were built as the Dan Ryan Extension, and the road ends where it meets I-94 on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

The Arkansas road begins at I-40 in North Little Rock, sharing pavement with US 67 and US 167. It runs northeast through Sherwood, Jacksonville, Cabot, Beebe, Searcy, Bald Knob and Newport and stops at US 412 in Walnut Ridge. Wikipedia measures the missing link to Sikeston at 95.89 miles, and for now US 67 and US 60 carry that traffic by way of Poplar Bluff.

Interstate junctions along I-57

The list reads south to north. It opens on the Arkansas road with I-40 in North Little Rock, where that segment begins, and Wikipedia also has I-57 meeting the end of I-440 in Jacksonville. Every other entry is on the original road, starting with I-55 at Sikeston, Missouri, and all of them after that are in Illinois. I-24 begins at I-57 near Pulleys Mill in Williamson County, and I-64 and I-70 each share a few miles of I-57, at Mount Vernon and at Effingham. In Champaign, I-72 ends at a cloverleaf with I-57 and I-74 crosses nearby. I-80 comes in at Country Club Hills, and the list closes with I-94 on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago.

Fatal crashes on I-57

Fatal crashes on I-57 killed 143 people from 2020 to 2024, in 121 crashes, about 29 deaths a year. The rate covers only the Missouri and Illinois road: Missouri's 22.33 Route Log miles plus 364.16 miles in Illinois, the Wikipedia length that includes the 5.59 miles shared with I-70. On that basis I-57 had 7.4 deaths per 100 route miles per year, below the Interstate average of 9.5, and it ranks 29th of 56 routes, counting from the highest rate. Arkansas gets no rate. Its road was signed US 67 and US 167 through 2024, so federal crash records for those years list its crashes under the US routes, and its 108.30 miles count toward length only.

Illinois recorded 135 deaths and a rate of 7.4, and Missouri had 8 deaths on its 22.33 miles for a rate of 7.2. Both are below the network average. Cook County, at the Chicago end, had 51 deaths, more than a third of the total. Jefferson County followed with 10, then Iroquois with 9, Will with 8 and Coles with 7. Deaths held between 30 and 32 a year from 2020 through 2022 and dropped to 25 in both 2023 and 2024.

Counties with the most I-57 crash deaths

Bridges on I-57

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory counts 277 bridges on the I-57 main line, 265 in Illinois and 12 in Missouri. It files no Arkansas bridges under the I-57 number. Thirty bridges rate Poor, or 10.8 percent, and every one is in Illinois, where they make up 11.3 percent of the state's I-57 bridges. Missouri has none rated Poor. Of the rest, 202 rate Fair and 45 Good, and half the bridges on the route were built in 1967 or earlier.

At Cairo, I-57 crosses the Mississippi River on a steel through arch that took six years to build and cost $25.4 million. Interstate Guide says it was dedicated on June 23, 1978, and was the last part of the corridor to open.

Tolls on I-57

I-57 has no entries in the toll facility list FHWA published as of January 1, 2023. Wikipedia and Interstate Guide describe no priced lanes opened on it since, so driving either segment end to end costs nothing in tolls. The Illinois Tollway's I-294 does meet I-57 in Chicago's south suburbs, but tolls apply only once a driver leaves I-57 for it.

When each part of I-57 opened

Illinois built its road in pieces over about a dozen years. The oldest stretch, 6.2 miles from east of Bradley to Kankakee, already appears on the 1959 state map. The section from Dongola north to Marion opened on September 26, 1961. In Chicago, a 1.1-mile piece from the Dan Ryan to Halsted Street opened on November 6, 1963, and the rest of the city segment followed in phases through 1970. The final Illinois section opened at Paxton in December 1971.

Until 1978, I-57 stopped at US 60 and US 62 outside Charleston, Missouri, and the Cairo bridge closed that gap. Later projects widened the Effingham overlap with I-70 to six lanes, with ground broken on October 5, 2010 and work running into the fall of 2016. The I-294 interchange opened in two phases, the second on September 11, 2022.

The Arkansas road began as a provision in a federal funding bill. Language added in 2016 named US 67 from North Little Rock to Walnut Ridge as Future I-57, and it became law in 2017. AASHTO approved the future route on September 24, 2017. Wikipedia dates the formal I-57 designation to November 7, 2024, and I-57 signs started going up in March 2025. Toward closing the gap, about 62 miles of US 60 and US 67 in Missouri, between Sikeston and near Harviell, are already freeway or expressway. In Arkansas, a four-mile bypass of Corning broke ground on November 14, 2024, won a $24.9 million federal RAISE grant in February 2025, and is due to be finished in late 2027.

I-57 traffic and road conditions

For wrecks, closures and weather on I-57 today, use the traveler websites that Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois each run, linked below. Illinois holds most of the mileage, so its site covers the bulk of a Chicago trip.

I-57 questions