A public hearing with a presentation about changing IA 58’s intersection with Viking Road into an interchange will be held Tuesday, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports.
The roadbed for current 58 will be lowered and a very tight SPUI constructed. I have no idea how that’s going to work, but it’s certainly going to mean lots of disruption when it happens.
A rendering included with the article shows the proposal to build a new flyover-ramp interchange with US 20 as well. You can see the right-of-way lines left behind as an entirely new four-lane would be built just to the west of the current center point of the interchange (where 20 goes over the road) and then go in an elevated S-curve over Ridgeway Avenue and the current road (part of which would be eliminated) before hooking up with the current road south of Viking. However, that interchange and another tight SPUI at Greenhill Road have no money and aren’t in the five-year plan.
Retail east of the 58/Viking intersection has grown tremendously over the past decade and a half, from the Farm & Fleet and Wal-Mart to largely supplanting College Square Mall with a Target, strip-mall storefronts, and a McDonald’s (which is a recent enough development I only know about it via a picture with the article).