Tuesday night is going to have a rarity for highway construction plans nowadays, a formal meeting. An “updated preliminary design” for the US 61 Wapello bypass comes six years after the initial proposal. It includes a huge change. The new design has a full interchange south of Wapello, northeast of the 65th Street/K Avenue intersection.
If this isn’t the first time that a city has succeeded in getting the state to change its four-lane plans in a big way, it’s one of a very few. The 2018 plan involved only one point of access to Wapello, the G62 exit. Residents and emergency services hated it. Then in 2019 the DOT offered a half-interchange slip ramp at the south end. Residents and emergency services still hated it. In 2020 the DOT offered a J-turn at the south end. The J-turn concept became so toxic in the 2010s that the Iowa DOT rebranded it as a “restricted crossing U-turn intersection.” That’s the name applied when the first one opened in Iowa southeast of Fort Dodge on US 20. (It wouldn’t have been needed if the new gas station there had opened up a mile to the west at the Coalville exit. Alas.)
But now — again, six years after the preliminary-but-ideally-final plan was released and Wapello raised holy hell — it very much looks like the city will get everything it wanted, even a Business 61 route.
In May 2021 I said that Thanksgiving 2030 would be a realistic possibility for completion of the four-lane US 61. As of now, the five-year plan has paving of the Wapello bypass in fiscal year 2029 (late 2028-early 2029). I may have a horn to toot later.