Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

On the Transportation Commission agenda for tomorrow is this line item: Transfer of Jurisdiction – Portion of Virginia Street from Sioux City to Iowa DOT.

This has to refer to the newly built Virginia Street in the area of the I-29 reconstruction project. Google Maps (but not the satellite view, so it happened last year) shows Virginia coming down to end in a half-diverging-diamond interchange. The interchange itself spans a long area with what I’ll call “frontage ramps” much like the volleyball interchange with IA 100 and Blairs Ferry Road in Cedar Rapids. A traveler leaving downtown on Pierce Street wanting to get to southbound I-29 will not merge immediately, but pass by Virginia Street and Floyd Boulevard before finally getting on the mainline near the Floyd River.

Is the transfer for just the part under the interstate, or is it the 1/10 of a mile from the southbound ramps to Gordon Street? If the former, it could open the door to an official reroute of Business US 20, which currently continues west on Gordon Drive until it runs out of road and becomes an ramp to the US 77 interchange. In fact, for eastbound Business 20 to be a continuous route, it now has to exit at Virginia Street. However, Gordon Drive itself still exists west of there, and under state jurisdiction as an unsigned extension of IA 12.

If they give it a number, I hope it’s not a weird one. Just stick to the 900s, please.

I’ve added photos taken at the beginning and end of what were not Iowa-specific trips, but rather the start and end of longer ones, last summer. Here is a list of major and minor additions to pages in chronological order of visit — something in 15 counties. Many of these pages went without changes throughout the 2010s.

MAJOR

• IA 21: Blanket coverage of its 1980 and present south ends
• US 63: Updated signage at the Missouri state line
• IA 244: Perspective from the gravel road approaching I-80
• IA 191: Both current ends but especially the south, which I hadn’t traveled since 2005 and got just in time before the medium green signs changed
• IA 173: Pre-1980 end in Elk Horn, plus the Little Mermaid finally makes an appearance on this website
• IA 223: Pre-1980 end in downtown Baxter
• IA 144: Pre-bypass end in Perry, plus more photos at both current ends
• IA 219: Blanket coverage of my third visit to Lake Park, and some clarification on the north ends
• IA 313: Photos from downtown Melvin
• IA 166: Photos from Hastings
• Business IA 2: Downtown and east end
• IA 181: Photos from my third visit to Melcher-Dallas but first since 2004
• IA 253: Some updated signage and information
• Business US 34 (Chariton): A couple pictures, and correction to a photo that was facing west not east
• Business US 34 (Ottumwa): Some rewriting about its west end, a photo related to the retail apocalypse, and some ugly sign sets near the east end

MINOR

• IA 23: A couple photos at its south end
• IA 389: Current LGS on southbound 149, with the US 63 bypass in the background
• IA 149 South: At the US 63 bypass
• IA 2: The newly built Nebraska City SPUI
• IA 224: One picture on IA 14, to go with photos from 2018 in/near Kellogg that were also semi-recently added
• IA 213: Updated signage on EB US 34 to show that whoever replaced the “Jct” and arrow on the county road shield didn’t use the right ones

The gribblenation.com website is one of the older surviving roadgeek-related websites, currently with five contributors.

One of the contributors, who had very little experience in Iowa, drove a mix of old and new US 20 across the state last year and made a blog post about it in March.