# What's with the gates?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-gates/495601>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 6, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-gates/495601 "2009-05-06T23:24:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![berkelman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@berkelman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/berkelman)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-gates/495601/1 "2009-05-06T23:24:17Z")

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Over the past year or so, gates have been installed on several ramps (Fullerton, Webster, North) onto the Kennedy. I’ve never seen them down, but why were they installed?

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**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-gates/495601/2 "2009-05-08T01:56:15Z")

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One theory is that it’s for presidential motorcades from O’Hare. More probably, it was in the works for several years as a Fatherland Security project, for contraflow evacuations from dirty bombs, etc.