Chicago mayoral candidate Bill Daley is calling for the city to rename the Dan Ryan Expressway after former President Barack Obama.
In a press release issued Friday, Daley says that the city’s highways are named for the “towering figures in our history,” and that Obama’s name belongs among those who have been honored.
“Renaming the highway for President Obama will be a daily reminder for all of us that America’s first African-American president was shaped by Chicago,” he said in a statement. “We were part of history.”
A section of Interstate 55 is already named after the 44th president, with the Illinois legislature passing the bill in 2017. That stretch of highway runs from the Tri-State Tollway south to mile marker 202, near Pontiac.
Another highway is also named for Obama, as the 134 Freeway in California, located between Glendale and Pasadena, was recently christened the President Barack H. Obama Highway.
There are already two Chicago highways named after former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.
