Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

June 23, 2014: Facing south, but heading north, on US 61 at I-55, Scott City, Missouri.

US 61 in Missouri is two very different highways. North of St. Louis, it is part of the Avenue of the Saints, a project that took two decades to complete. It’s a fast-moving four-lane except for Hannibal, which at this point I doubt will ever get a bypass no matter how much local governments beg for it. Eventually, 61 breaks off to run down Lindbergh Boulevard in suburban St. Louis. Once upon a time it was an expressway bypass but now is a heavy-use arterial.

South of St. Louis, US 61 is a lazy two-lane that hovers in the shadow of I-55. Its biggest change since creation is that, in 1953, it was rerouted onto MO 25 from Jackson (near Cape Girardeau) to Festus to be much closer to the future interstate corridor rather than follow today’s MO 72 to Fredericktown and US 67 north of there.

Traveling this portion is not for the pressed-of-time, and indeed I spaced out segments along five different road trips including the return from the 2012 Liberty Bowl. I can only imagine how mind-numbing, or nerve-wracking, it was when it was the only road between St. Louis and Memphis.

When US 61 does meet I-55, the interweaving can be a bit odd, and that’s especially evident at Scott City. There, 61 crosses over itself, or more accurately curves over the space between the southbound and northbound interstate ramps, and following northbound 61 requires two left turns in about 360 feet.

This year, the Missouri DOT is going to finish a project that removes that issue. A new interchange is being built to the south, where US 61 will join I-55 to go north past the Cape Girardeau airport to a different complicated interchange where U-turning from southbound 55 to northbound 61 involves entirely different streets than following 61 through either all-south or all-north.

The new routing is about 2.5 miles long and approved in the spring 2019 AASHTO route numbering meeting (large PDF, starting at page 57), but construction is still going on. What’s bypassed will become a Business 61.

Since part of the new segment is an all-new road, and 61 will be signed on part of I-55 it wasn’t before, that’s going to add a second untraveled portion of the route for me in the state. I was hoping that all I’d have left was 17 miles between Festus and Bloomsdale.

Aside from the one-soon-to-be-two pieces, I was doing pretty darn good, having traveled 61 from the I-69 stub (near the Harrah’s casino that went bust) in far northern Mississippi all the way to its north end north of St. Paul. Considering that I’ve already been to every county with an interstate on or near the Mississippi River north of Vicksburg, it’s going to take a heck of a reason to grab 20 miles. Let’s say … Iowa State in the Sugar Bowl.

Roundabouts are bad enough, but a double roundabout at a diamond interchange is perhaps the stupidest construction “innovation” of the past decade. Wisconsin adores them; the new(ish) US 12 from Baraboo to Wisconsin Dells is infested with such pairs. This means that to go through the interchange on the cross road is to endure two separate roundabouts in a short span.

The first case of them in Iowa is University Avenue at IA 27/58 in Cedar Falls. The second is proposed for the eastern edge of Iowa City.

Plans released at a meeting June 5 show a six-lane I-80 between the Herbert Hoover Highway and West Branch exits, picking up from where that currently stops. The Herbert Hoover Highway (F44, formerly IA 979, IA 1, IA 139, and IA 74) would be repositioned across the interstate. Today’s onramp to eastbound 80 follows almost exactly the road line that existed straight through the land that became the exit area; that intersection will be moved from its current spot.

Jason Hancock’s research found that this segment of I-80 had a special temporary opening for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in 1962, then opened for good two weeks later. A Cedar Rapids Gazette article at the time said 50,000 visitors were expected and opening the highway “was expected to ease what otherwise might have been a gigantic traffic tieup.”

This will be the first six-lane interstate in Iowa not immediately at/in a metro area, although obviously it’s very near Iowa City, and part of a long-term plan to six-lane I-80 to Davenport.