Spokesman Mike Kuehn says some sections date back to 1960's, or even earlier.
"The pavement is getting older, and it needs additional work. Once you get to a certain point it becomes more cost effective to replace it versus to continue to re-surface, patch, and what have you."
11,000 to 12,000 vehicles a day travel through this stretch of Highway 92.
"We do have a complete the streets policy with IDOT which means that we are not looking at just the vehicles but we also need to take into account pedestrians and bicylists as well."
Kuehn says the project might cost as much as 40 million dollars.
But money for the work has not yet been included in the agency's long range improvement budget - only money for preliminary engineering work.