July 16, 2020: US 52 was signed along IA 136 between US 20 and Luxemburg even before the Southwest Arterial opened. This duplex will turn out to be short-lived.
Remember when I said that US 52’s reroute through Dyersville should have resulted in IA 136 being truncated between US 20 and IA 3, but the state both declined to do it and contracted for a batch of wide shields along the route?
Well!
Jason Hancock found a Dubuque Telegraph-Herald story (link very paywalled) that says the overlap will be deleted, and 136 will end at the US 20 interchange. This would be the second terminus change related to the opening of the Southwest Arterial, the other being IA 3’s truncation to the Sageville intersection that was the end of IA 32. (By the way, we still don’t have a specific date for the latter. One could make a legalistic argument that it happened when the arterial opened August 17, 2020, since Dubuque agreed to a road swap, but signs remained up for most if not all of the winter of 2020-21 and US 52 was double-signed.)
This will be the second time IA 136’s “north” end has been pulled back from Luxemberg to Dyersville, but not to the same spot. The first time, in the 1960s, was related to an official reroute of US 52 that didn’t last because Dubuque businesses raised objections. US 20 hadn’t been four-laned yet, so the end was the intersection with old 20 at Commercial Club Park.
In Luxemburg, when the 136 signs are taken down, 52 will go straight north-south through the intersection and 3 will go straight east-west.
Oh, and also, the US 20 Swiss Valley Road interchange appears to have opened, right where 20 angles northeast toward Dubuque. That could use some additional information, though.