Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

The DOT meeting about US 61 in Wapello, which I referred to earlier this week, has been scheduled for April 24. The project information is already online (PDF).

In that writeup we learn a little more about US 61 in the area. The present alignment of US 61 was built in 1932; prior to then it came into Wapello from the south on J Avenue, crossed the Iowa River on the bridge that later was added to IA 99, and went to Grandview on I Avenue. (IA 252 was a legacy of this.) It was widened in 1955 and then widened again in 1996.

The four-lane would split from the current alignment a mile and a half north of Wapello, bypass to the west, and rejoin present US 61 at the short diagonal near J Avenue. With the through-town option eliminated, there are two bypass+interchange options left. The nearer, straighter option runs right over two farmsteads on G62.

There is no timetable for the project right now; it’s not in the current five-year plan.

A report last week in the Muscatine Journal says that an option to expand US 61 to five lanes through the town of Wapello has been removed from consideration. Two alternatives use a western bypass.

Building a four-lane US 61 in the area is years if not a decade out. Wapello and Mediapolis are the only towns on the part of 61 that is not four lanes.

This is a “clearing the spindle” week, where I bring up items glossed over during posting of my trip log and my illness.

The project page for proposed improvements to US 20 on the west side of Dubuque only includes Alternative B, which limits the area from Menards to the railroad bridge to three stoplights and creates some frontage roads. The stoplight at Menards, which today is literally the first/last one on US 20 in the state of Iowa, would be removed and Old Highway Road would be the first signalized intersection.

In July, a meeting about this area included a plan of convoluted roads that would have made the highway controlled-access. That appears to be off the table now. This construction plan is not directly related to the Southwest Arterial; the Seippel Road interchange is to the southwest of Menards.

KWWL has a story from the March 20 meeting.