{"id":10154,"date":"2018-08-06T10:10:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T15:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=10154"},"modified":"2018-08-01T01:50:18","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T06:50:18","slug":"its-hard-to-get-to-baxter-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2018\/08\/its-hard-to-get-to-baxter-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s hard to get to Baxter right now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Construction projects at either end of old IA 223<\/a> in Jasper County make any east-west excursion to Baxter somewhat difficult at the moment. Baxter is one of a handful of Iowa towns with a population above 1000 but without a state-maintained road within a mile of city limits. IA 223 became F17 in 1997 despite having average traffic above 1000 vehicles a day even 20 years later<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, there is the biggie<\/a>: The intersection that served as 223’s west end is permanently closed while the road is realigned to meet the new US 65\/IA 117\/IA 330 interchange<\/a>. The interchange is between the\u00a0existing intersections<\/a>.\u00a0The official detour, scheduled to last 10 more days, goes down to Bondurant, east on I-80, then back up on S52. I don’t know why it doesn’t use IA 117 and F24 \u2014 unless it’s precisely because<\/em> “eastbound” drivers would have to turn left at the 65\/117 intersection.<\/p>\n

Then there’s a run-of-the-mill bridge project at the other end. The bridge over the North Skunk River, just west of IA 14, is being replaced. Given its age, Jasper County is replacing what had been a state bridge. The Newton Daily News<\/em> says<\/a> that started July 10 and will go until around Halloween.<\/p>\n

That bridge isn’t the only one left over from state-control days. Two bridges on F48 between Colfax and Newton \u2014 US 6 until 1980 \u2014 are showing their age as well. The Jasper County board of supervisors approved federal-aid swap funding in last month’s meeting, the NDN<\/em> reports<\/a>, but that’s merely the first step in a long process to get them replaced.<\/p>\n

So while I could see the interchange under construction for the first time in a year on the way to the Iowa State Fair (rather than passing by every other month as I would have living in Des Moines), the pre-1980 Baxter spur end will have to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction projects at either end of old IA 223 in Jasper County make any east-west excursion to Baxter somewhat difficult at the moment. Baxter is one of a handful of Iowa towns with a population above 1000 but without a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10157,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10154\/revisions\/10157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}