I’m attempting to make up for lost time from last week (long story) so here’s the story I stumbled upon by happenstance on my way back from the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat.
(Yes, of course the way back involved hitting Lyon County for the first time since my circumnavigation in 2015! The story is from Sioux County.)
For a variety of reasons, I’ve been going back and forth on US 30 in Benton County the past couple of weeks. This summer, crews have been working on the last part of the four-lane, from the Luzerne corner (V44) to IA 21.
On the night of Sept. 21, there were message boards warning of “Lane Shift” starting “next week.” When I returned a week later, westbound traffic had moved into the new lanes, which are a couple hundred feet (if that) south of the original lanes. There are only two spots where westbound traffic is not two lanes and 65 mph: each end of the previous two-lane segment. The crossovers there are being torn out.
The eastbound lanes, which had been serving as head-to-head traffic, remain with only one lane open and 55 mph. Presumably this has to do with the need to remove the pavement markings and restripe it.
The most notable change between the east half of US 30 in Benton County and today is only noticeable at night. Every intersection with a paved road now only has one streetlight. As Jim Magdefrau reported from the Benton supervisors’ meeting, that is because all those intersections are county roads and don’t qualify for more. The former state highways knocked off in the Second Great Decommissioning of 2003 (IA 287, IA 201, and IA 279) all have five streetlights at their intersections. This means, in my opinion, that the intersections are underpowered in lighting, especially the Blairstown/Van Horne corner (north end of old IA 82) which has specially separated left-turn lanes. That one needs at least one more. I think each of the others would be better off with three, one for each direction of 30 and one on the intersecting county road.
Ideally, for an important closed link like this, I’d be able to get a date for “totally open, four lanes in both directions” but we may have to fudge it. (And not even the good fudge, because there’s a month changeover, so it has “nuts”.)
I was a little busy last week, so I didn’t get some posts prepared. Here’s my story from Sept. 17, when I originally intended to write about the statewide barn tour but instead learned about a woman who dedicated her life to nature and preserving an early 20th century ornithologist’s legacy.
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.
No, we’re not off to see the wizard. We’re off to read about the infamous bat incident.
“When did Ozzy become an actor?” the band Bowling for Soup asked in the song “1985”, which was released in 2004, which means that the song itself is closer to the year it references than the present day.
On to the P’s!
An event originally planned for last year as part of Traer’s sesquicentennial will be held this weekend.
A re-enactment of the May 1864 Battle of the Wilderness will take place at T.F. Clark Park Friday through Sunday. An abbreviated schedule is at the North Tama Telegraph. Friday (today) the grounds open at noon. Saturday and Sunday will have the re-enactments. Sadly, there’s notable rain in the forecast for the first time in a long time starting Friday and going through Monday.
(Unfortunately, between work and going to the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, I cannot attend. It would make a great story.)
(So between the Iowa State Fair and the retreat, we have perfect Sunday-through-Wednesdays, but rain comes on both of those events? Come on!)
Yes, it happened during RVTV week, the Thursday before Iowa State beat Iowa. However, Nexstar holds all its newscasts hostage for two hours, forbidding streaming, so it was new to me.
The prompt was a grandmother who lives in Traer.
Could Traer host RVTV some day?
Starting today, according to an Iowa DOT press release, the intersection of US 218 and Maple Street on the north side of Janesville will be closed. A new road will be built alongside the railroad tracks heading north to a new intersection with 260th Street, which is getting an interchange with US 218.
The closure of the intersection is the next step in the plan to convert US 218 between Janesville and Waverly into a full freeway. Building an interchange between the C57 and Business 218 exits allows for current intersections in the area to feed into frontage roads.
This is, to my knowledge, the third interchange in Iowa with a gravel road. The other two are the River Road and Honey Creek exits on I-680 in Pottawattamie County. There will be some pavement on 260th, from the railroad eastward, and three of the four frontage roads will be paved. One of those is the Maple Street extension. One is an Easton Avenue extension that will use some of 218’s present northbound lanes as 218 finally gets a kink that’s been around since forever ironed out. The final paved extension, Eagle Avenue, will include a short segment over a stub of 1920s concrete that was bypassed long ago and ended its life as a driveway to a farmhouse that was torn down in 2020.
I made the Iowa Capital Dispatch last week with my Substack piece from the previous week about being old obsolete washed-up 25 years removed from my senior year of high school.
I managed to scrape together a story about Big Boy’s travels while barely returning to work on time. (The train showed up late.)
