May 30

A misadventure in timing

Posted on Thursday, May 30, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The scene: Where the tall corn grows

Status of the protagonist: Getting cross-eyed staring at spreadsheets, realizing that one was set up with different alphabetization rules than the other

The internal dialogue: “Woof, transferring one data set to sync with another slightly different one is harder than I thought. But I’d like to work with the most recent population estimates rather than the 2010 numbers.”

Thirty-six hours later:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019
City and Town Population Totals: 2010-2018

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May 29

More 2018 photos sprinkled across pages

Posted on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I’ll get the good-sized batch of photos related to my trip for the US 20 completion ceremony later, but in the meantime, aside from the collection in Mount Pleasant, here’s a list of pages with a new photo or two: 130, 258, 394 North, 406 (again), 921, 941, 945.

More extensive revisions and additions for:

  • IA 28, with new photos in Windsor Heights and what’s left of old Army Post Road at 42nd Street
  • IA 72 (see blog post)
  • IA 77, both at IA 92 and its pre-1980 end in Richland
  • IA 107, traveling the entire route for the first time since 2003, with new and larger photos at each featured point
  • IA 111, expanding from the one photo I took in 2003 with my second visit to Kanawha
  • IA 114, extensive coverage at both ends and a sign that’s more than 40 years old
  • IA 134, for the first time in 15 years
  • IA 927, covering the new signs at the I-280 interchange, of which there are many
  • Also regarding 2018, Lambs Grove has been added to the RAGBRAI city list after consulting the Newton RAGBRAI site — which seems to have 404’d.
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May 28

Planning to replace the Gordon Drive Viaduct

Posted on Tuesday, May 28, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Gordon Drive Viaduct in Sioux City, whose original structure is 83 years old, has been on lists of bridges most in need of replacement in Iowa. The Iowa DOT is starting work on its replacement.

These stories from KTIV and KMEG cover the meeting last week, where the DOT said it wants to have a proposal in the next year. Construction wouldn’t begin until the middle of the next decade at the earliest. (On the plus side, I-29 will be done by then! After that, the only project set for the area is that the US 20 Morningside Drive exit is supposed to have bridges over an abandoned railroad line taken out in 2023.)

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May 27

Memorial Day 2019

Posted on Monday, May 27, 2019, at 10:20 AM by Jeff


May 26, 2019: Members of the Traer American Legion carry out a 21-gun salute at Buckingham Cemetery. This followed a ceremony at the Traer Memorial Building (and, earlier, visits to other cemeteries).

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May 24

Analysis of 2020-24 Iowa DOT five-year plan

Posted on Friday, May 24, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

For this look at the upcoming five-year plan, not everything new is mentioned and not everything previously in is mentioned. Years are fiscal years as listed in the draft program (large PDF; scroll to near the bottom for the highway segment).

  • Replacement of the IA 9 Mississippi River bridge at Lansing, Iowa’s oldest state-maintained bridge over the river, has been added to 2024. That’s two decades after a feasibility study (large PDF), and seven years after a meeting to prepare to develop an environmental assessment. No matter what happens, the bridge will not be allowed to make it to its centennial, according to this article from the La Crosse Tribune.
  • The ends of the massive projects in Sioux City, the I-74 bridge, and Council Bluffs are really within sight now, with work ending in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively. The last of those, though, doesn’t include anything on I-80 between the Madison Avenue and US 6 exits, and the Council Bluffs Interstate website itself indicates work around the I-29/I-480 interchange could last until mid-2023.
  • US 30 remains on schedule to be four-laned from Tama to IA 21 in 2020, at IA 21 in 2021, and from IA 21 to US 218 in 2023. The US 218 bridge over an abandoned railroad just south of the E44 junction will be taken out in 2023.
  • I-80 is going to be six-laned … in small bites … east of Des Moines … eventually. There are projects at IA 146 (2022, up a year), from the Cedar River to the Durant exit (2023), the Herbert Hoover Highway to West Branch (2023), and over the Skunk River (2021). West Branch is definitely six. The Cedar County portion could be six; the IA 38 exit meeting was the one with plans for the ULTIMATE LANE. The Skunk crossing based on this map will be grade-for-six, pave-for-four, and a section east of US 169 over the Raccoon River will likely get the same treatment.
  • Unquestionably getting six lanes: I-35 in the north part of Ankeny (2020) and then to IA 210 (2024). Spots in Warren County where current new southbound lane grading abruptly ends will be closed up over five years, but may not yet come with lane expansion.
  • Four-lane US 61 north of Burlington to Mediapolis has been pushed up a year. The Mediapolis bypass is on for 2024.
  • That US 61 project, the US 30 project mentioned above, and a US 18/218 interchange in Floyd (2022) are all pegged as made possible by the increase in the state gas tax.
  • Grading for a US 63 bypass of Oskaloosa pops up in 2024, meaning paving would follow a year or two later.
  • Both the Swiss Valley Road exit and the Southwest Arterial in Dubuque County are programmed to be finished by next July.
  • The DOT has condensed the I-80/I-380 interchange project a bit, moving faster earlier, possibly to make way for rebuilding the 1st Avenue interchange in Coralville. See this Gazette story.
  • Interestingly, more projects that I wouldn’t typify as major — for example, replacing the early-1980s concrete on US 20 between US 63 and IA 21, or a 2.5-mile new piece of IA 17 moving off the Lincoln Highway — have a “traffic signs” category. I don’t know if it’s because costs for signs alone have gone up, or it’s for more accurate accounting, or what. Looking back at the previous plan, there were some lines for signs there too, so perhaps I just wasn’t noticing all of them.
  • A US 59 bridge over an abandoned railroad is going to be taken out in 2021. It’s been on the program, but it caught my eye this time because while going through the Cherokee newspaper archives I read about construction of its predecessor.
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May 23

Burlington’s Cascade Bridge continues to deteriorate

Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The hole in the Great River Road isn’t getting any better.

The Cascade Bridge on the south side of Burlington, closed for a decade now, sits and waits for the city to put it out of its misery. They found a sinkhole earlier this month.

A Burlington Hawk Eye story earlier this month pegs the cost of repair at $7 million and replacement at $3 million, the latter a much lower number than quoted in 2018. If those numbers are correct, the clearest answer in my opinion is to tear the 1896 bridge down and build a new one.

The Hawk Eye now reports the Burlington city council is considering a utility franchise fee — replacing a local-option sales tax — to pay for the bridge. The last attempt to set a franchise fee was overwhelmingly rejected by voters, the earlier Hawk Eye story said.

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May 22

Photo(s) 34,000

Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Also approximately my 2500th blog post (depending on when this actually goes up).


April 19, 2017

Abandoned schools aren’t unique to Iowa. They’re scattered across the Great Plains. I found emphasis on that as I drove across the southern tier (mostly) of Nebraska’s counties on US 136, then US 6. As is often the case in Iowa, many are visible a mile or more before you reach town.

Filley, Nebraska, population 132, is about an hour south of Lincoln. It lost its school in 1999 in a merger with Adams, 14 miles away. A shade under two decades later, trees had overrun the front of the oldest building (top photo).

Right next to the school was the baseball field with a football scoreboard. Concrete pads marked where the bleachers had been. There’s a modern playground set behind a locked restroom facility for the athletics. The community tried its best to provide for the children.

Filley Community Field
Nebraska Game & Parks Commission
Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, Department of Interior
1977

I would see more abandoned schools the next day.

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May 21

Year-old truck stop may not reopen

Posted on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

At the beginning of February 2018, a Love’s Travel Center opened at the I-29/US 34 interchange, the only truck stop between the IA 2 exit and Council Bluffs.

Thirteen and fourteen months later, two “bomb cyclones” — the Midwestern equivalent of a nor’easter, according to a story from CNN, reprinted at WHO — whacked the Missouri River valley. Unusually large snowfalls for April accompanied rain and melting snow to cause massive flooding in western Iowa. Hamburg drowned. The practically-brand-new Love’s was flooded out (bottom of page).

Now, I-29 is open (DOT status PDF) but there are no open exits between IA 2 and US 34. US 34 is closed across the Missouri River. So even if the truck stop rebuilt and reopened at warp speed, there would be fewer travelers patronizing it for a long time.

So it won’t. The Glenwood Opinion-Tribune reported last week that the company has “no immediate plans” to reopen the truck stop, putting a huge dent in Mills County’s hope to turn the area into a business park.

A story about a month ago on WOWT about Pacific Junction, the nearest town to the exit, said residents would be told if they could return to their homes, but some may not want to. (Also see the still of the long-closed school, surrounded by water just like the rest of the town.)

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May 20

Essex holding on to its high school

Posted on Monday, May 20, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

In a update to this post, there has been a change in the Essex school district’s strategy. In a series of KMA stories:

A Valley News Today (Shenandoah) article in March reported that the state had suggested the district be looking to cut $500,000 from its budget. Apparently not on the table — or at least not mentioned anywhere I’ve seen — is increasing the local income surtax. Essex’s surtax is currently 9%, while the highest rates in the state aren’t too far away in Sidney (20%) and Fremont-Mills (17%).

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May 17

The unwatched masses

Posted on Friday, May 17, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

For purposes of comparison continuity, numbers come from the tvseriesfinale.com website.

A TV show has a series finale Sunday. You might have heard about it. It’s “last show that everyone watches at the same time” (in 2017!). It’s “the last show we watch together.” It’s “the last great blockbuster TV show.” The networks devoted time to talking about an accidental prop. The Huffington Post wanted to know why a character didn’t pet his pet goodbye. It’s presumed well-enough-known that there was a crossover Super Bowl ad with a mass-market beverage.

It’s also very much not my cup of tea, as watching one of the more infamous sequences on YouTube had me nope-ing out fast. (Plus, I’m poor.) But after being unable to escape the fawning over yet another non-network show about not-nice people, or at best anti-heroes, doing not-nice things, there’s only one thing to do: Blog a complaint.

“Game of Thrones” is averaging nearly 11.5 million viewers per episode of its last season, and who knows how many via streaming. (I’m going to have to ignore that last part for this.) That is, to be sure, a large number nowadays, and especially for premium cable.

You know what show hasn’t had fewer than 11.5 million viewers an episode this season, over three times as many episodes? “NCIS,” a traditional crime procedural. It’s a show on a network, with higher expectations and demands than cable. (It, too, is a show I do not watch.) But have you seen anything about it on Vulture, the AV Club, or anywhere the supposedly cool kids congregate? The most popular show overall is “The Big Bang Theory,” which has gotten a few this-show-is-ending pieces for its 12 years — and a thinkpiece from Vox about how much many people hate it.

But the difference is in that second column of the ratings. “Thrones” crushes it in the 18-49 demographic. “NCIS” does not. That means that people who talk about television on the Internet are more likely to see the former. (The latter? Well, those viewers are more likely to vote. The subtext is left as an exercise for the reader.)

There are so many thinkpieces about “Thrones” out there that the Ringer ginned up a paragraph to linking to points and counterpoints about whether this season was good or even competent, including some from its own website. The only thinkpiece ever written about “NCIS” was in May 2014, in the Atlantic, pointing out that no one writes thinkpieces about “NCIS.”

This isn’t the first time this has happened, although it could be the last depending on how this “peak TV” thing sorts out. The final season of “Mad Men” on basic-cable AMC averaged over 2 million viewers in its last season, and 3.37 million the season before. Time magazine wrote at least three articles about the series finale, not counting the cover story that ran beforehand. In 2014-15, “Forever” on ABC averaged more viewers and was cancelled as a ratings failure. (Those same numbers today would make it around the network’s sixth-highest scripted show.)

Ratings aren’t everything, maybe only barely anything, when it comes to what gets written about. But when someone says the end of “Thrones” is the last time “we” watch TV together, the response should be, “What do you mean we, whippersnapper?”

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