May 29, 2017: Hint enough for you?
“The Midwest,” for $1000, on Monday’s “Jeopardy!”:
The name of this second-largest city in Iowa mentions a tree and alludes to a river.
There are multiple cities in Iowa that mention a tree and allude to a river, and the writers even narrowed it down, but no one bit. Triple stumper.
(Yes, of course I ran the category.)
“Fiat Lux” — “Let there be light,” the motto of the University of California system
“Fiat Slug” — “Let there be slug,” the non-motto of the University of California-Santa Cruz, home of the squishiest mascot in college sports. No focus groups were involved:
Students knew what they were doing when they adopted the slug. If other colleges used fierce mammals to hype their footballs teams, then UCSC, which had no football team, would take up the cause of a slow-moving, slimy creature that had no spine or shell and could mate for eight hours at a time.
The UCSC Athletic Department did a brand refresh in 2020 with a new logo.
Also, phonetically if not alphabetically, there’s Lwaxana Troi.
When the Mount Vernon-Lisbon US 30 bypass opened without any signs indicating a Business 30, I figured the DOT had simply decided against one. Either I was wrong or someone’s mind changed.
The spring 2020 meeting of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials included an application from Iowa for a Business 30 in Linn County. The business route uses IA 1, old 30 (temporarily designated IA 830), and a new road angling southeastward to the Lisbon exit. As of the end of 2021, there were no signs. Either new BGSs have to be erected or, more economically, “Business 30” standalone signs put up by them.
Lack of an official Business 30 designation didn’t stop either town from marking the old road that way on street signs, including this one where it intersects the Lincoln Highway east of Lisbon and is not on the applied-for business route, and this one at the west end of the bypassed alignment also not on the applied-for business route.
I am unsure about signage status for the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway in the area. One option is to use Adams Avenue (which does not intersect the bypass), a newly built road named Old Lincoln Highway, and a bit of now-paved Charles Avenue. That makes more sense than doubling back to the interchange, and the name of the new road is likely a clue, but that route involves a left turn off 30 for westbound Lincoln Highway travelers.
The application to AASHTO also included a “cleanup” of the newly truncated I-680 route to remove its overlap with I-29 and officially make the Crescent interchange 680’s east end.
The draft 2023-27 five-year construction plan includes this entry in Linn County: “IA 1 interchange in Mount Vernon … Traffic Signs” for $110,000. Might this put Business 30 on BGSs? We’ll have to wait and see.
May 16, 2017: This curve at the west end of old IA 363 is going away.
On Tuesday, following the Memorial Day weekend, part of IA 150 will be closed to build a roundabout at the Urbana corner, according to this DOT press release. I covered the plan in a post in 2020.
There has been a curve at this location since IA 101 (now 150) was graded in the late 1920s.
(I almost typed 1923-27. Shows how much I’m looking into that era right now.)
The Iowa Transportation Commission’s five-year plan is out, with a font change, mixed-case type, comma separators, no mileages listed (again!) and occasionally a more informal style in the entries. The highway segment starts about halfway down this PDF. Here are some things that jumped out at me, in no order, referenced by fiscal years. See also my two-post set of notes from last year, where I’ll leave some things that are still on track.
Finally, I can’t let this go without comment, except my comment is [expletive deleted].
Hiawatha … Boyson Rd and N 12th Ave … Roundabout
Cedar Rapids … Mt Vernon Rd/8th Ave and 10th St SE … Roundabout
Cedar Rapids … Bowling St and Wilson Ave SW … Roundabout
Ottumwa … Albia Rd and N Quincy Ave … Roundabout
Polk County … NE Broadway, E38th and E 46th St … Roundabout
An update and new notice (via a weekend roadgeek meet) about projects near Marion:
Linn County’s oldest active bridge is going to be replaced, as this blog post covered earlier. But there’s good and interesting news: The bridge isn’t being demolished, it’s being moved! From the Linn County Secondary Roads Department:
The project was let on November 23, 2021 and was awarded to Peterson Contractors Inc. (PCI) for a cost of $184,373.00. The project consists of salvaging and relocating the historic truss bridge on Bertram Road over Indian Creek. The bridge will be relocated to the Indian Creek Nature Center on Otis Road and will be reused as a pedestrian bridge.
Also, the IA 100 bypass is getting another stoplight:
This project was let on September 14, 2021 and was awarded to Boomerang Corp of Anamosa, IA for a total cost of $727,903.95. This project will install traffic lights at the intersection of S 31st Street and Highway 100. The contractor plans to start in early June.
This will be the sixth stoplight on 100 between Business 100 (1st Avenue) and US 151. It’s the last four-way intersection on that segment that didn’t have a light.
It’s happening? Maybe? After a few votes and an extra $31 million?
Whatever the step or two is after “commencing to proceed to get started,” that’s where North Tama is right now in a master plan that would radically alter the present school complex.
In a combination public meeting and school building tour earlier this month, covered in the North Tama Telegraph, district residents and other interested parties got to see the final plan and offer their opinion on how to proceed.
The plan offers flexibility on when a second gym is constructed on the east side of the property. Opinion favored putting the replacement of the 1917 building first, according to the story. The story says the cost of replacing the 1917 building is less than 10 years of maintenance on it, although the other components raise the overall cost. A photo shows preservation of Walnut Street (and someone I’m a little familiar with).
I really hadn’t thought about the prevalence of two-gym sites in Iowa, but a Southeast Iowa Union story about how Van Buren is an outlier in its conference in not having a second gym makes me think this might be flipping from unusual to common. Each time a rural district has closed a town’s school it’s lost a gym, so it makes sense that way around.
The next meeting in the series is June 20.
October 17, 2021: The chimney of the Beaconsfield school building is visible at a distance. It’s about all that’s readily visible up close, too, because the deteriorating building is hidden in a grove of trees.
In a follow-up to this post from September, here’s even MORE about Ringgold County schools you never knew and didn’t know how to ask, via the Mount Ayr Record-News:
Starting next week, according to a DOT press release, US 63 will be closed between IA 8 and IA 96. It’s for a (very needed) asphalt resurfacing project and discussed more in this blog post. Toledo-Gladbrook traffic is fine, but Traer-Gladbrook will be complicated.
The official detour for 63 starts at the Garwin corner and uses E29, V18, and IA 8. BUT! The west half of IA 8 itself is officially detoured away from there, via IA 21, D65, and US 63, for at least two months. (Only about a 1-mile segment is totally off limits.)
So, technically if clumsily, northbound 63 will be coming into Traer from the west, while westbound 8 will be coming into Traer from the north. It’s kind of reminiscent of the Depression-era detour maps issued while so many roads in Iowa were being paved.
May 19, 2004: My first encounter, but not first payment, of $2 gas in Iowa was at this station at the Lime Springs corner on US 63. I managed to avoid that mark for another 10 months.
I’ve been keeping track of my car fillups since August 2003. The summer of 2008 was the worst for gas prices, with the summer of 2011 slightly less worse, but 2022 is rising up the charts quickly.
The highest price I had ever paid in Iowa for 10% ethanol blend was $3.899 in Davenport on July 6, 2008. (Two months later, prices dropped substantially.) The highest price in the next peak was $3.729 in Manchester on June 13, 2011.
Until last Thursday. Stations that had been listed at $3.949 in GasBuddy an hour before I drove past them were crossing the $4 mark. I use that tense deliberately, because one changed in the five minutes between looks.
The most I’ve ever paid nationwide was just above $4 in multiple states on that July 2008 road trip, peaking at $4.159 in Indianapolis. That’s unadjusted for inflation, since that’s something that’s become a much larger factor. (Speaking of inflation: An in-store slice of Casey’s pizza rose to $3 earlier this year.)
In 2019, I figured I’d probably give the car one more year. In 2020, I figured I’d probably give the car one more year. In 2021, I figured I’d probably give the car one more year. In 2022…
