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).

Posted in Tama County | Comments Off on Memorial Day 2019
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.
Posted in Construction, Highway Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Analysis of 2020-24 Iowa DOT five-year plan
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.

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Burlington’s Cascade Bridge continues to deteriorate
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.

Posted in Schools, Sequences, Trip Reports | Comments Off on Photo(s) 34,000
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.)

Posted in Iowa Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Year-old truck stop may not reopen
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%).

Posted in Schools | Comments Off on Essex holding on to its high school
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?”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on The unwatched masses
May 15

Southwest Arterial behind schedule

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Despite the headline on this KWWL story, Dubuque’s Southwest Arterial is going to take a little while longer.

City officials had been hoping for completion of the road by the end of this year’s construction season. But the wet, cold still-winter that Iowa has had this year (which is only turning around this week) put a dent into timing.

The first sentence from a Dubuque Telegraph-Herald story says the road isn’t likely to open for another 13 or 14 months, with construction going into next summer.

Posted in Construction | Comments Off on Southwest Arterial behind schedule
May 14

The ghost of IA 402

Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Added to the DOT’s five-year plan last year, for work this year, is a resurfacing project for IA 21 from IA 8 to US 20. It’s your typical hot-mix asphalt, flaggers ahead, etc., but the December letting packet had a special surprise — a reminder that once upon a time this was going to be Waterloo’s superhighway.

The secret history of IA 402 was my first deep dive for this website, looking heavily into newspaper articles of the time. Much, much later, when the construction documents from 1968 were posted online, I saw that the plans had gone so far as to include the centerline for the never-built southbound lanes. Now, the 1968 plan has been included with the resurfacing project as a reference, but with “Future Improvement” lined out (above) (the file is 39 MB for who knows why).

The two-lane segment was contracted out as 402, but it would not be signed that way. It opened in the summer of 1969 as an extension of IA 21. Waterloo would have to wait more than 15 years to get a freeway connection to the national system. In fact, the time the complete I-380 has existed isn’t much longer than the time Waterloo waited between being told a superhighway was coming and its arrival.

Posted in Construction | Comments Off on The ghost of IA 402
May 13

Everly will lose its school

Posted on Monday, May 13, 2019, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

“The Everly Cattlefeederettes won the sectional tournament at Hartley last week. Members of the squad are Jeanette Olson, Vicki Birchard, Cindy Fliss, Janet Scharnberg, Jo Scharnberg, Connie Selk, Lynda Nordstrom, Jan Scharnberg. Judi Walton, Jean Cadwallader, Linda Nath and Sua Morfitl.” — Hartley Sentinel, February 29, 1968, confirming that the feminine version of the name was not unheard of. And, yes, that 1968 team, though the gold of 1966 outranks the silver of that year.

The Everly Cattlefeeders have been gone for three decades. Now the place they called home will be empty.

Two months ago, the Clay Central-Everly school district, which started sharing in 1990 and consolidated in 1993, announced it would be discontinuing its high school and closing one of its two campuses. A month ago, Everly found out it was the loser. Stories: KIWA, Spencer Daily Reporter.

It was not inevitable but it was very likely this would be the case, since Royal already had the elementary facilities and the playground, and that would cause the least disruption.

It is not too common that a district small enough to be in this situation still had multiple sites. The next most recent case would be Harmony, which did the opposite of CCE and closed its elementary while moving all students into the former high school.

By my count Everly is the fourth town this year and tenth in the past three years to lose its only school, not counting two rural buildings (North Winneshiek also closes up shop this month).

(Didn’t look at the right time for an update, I guess. — Ed.)

Posted in Schools | Comments Off on Everly will lose its school