May 21

As we go on, we remember all the times we had together

Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2015, at 10:21 AM by Jeff

Now you have a 15-year-old one-hit wonder stuck in your head, too.

nt2000program

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May 20

US 218 between Waverly and Janesville could get interchange

Posted on Wednesday, May 20, 2015, at 10:43 AM by Jeff

Construction of an interchange for US 218/IA 27 at County Road C57, which just started, will make the corridor between Janesville and Cedar Falls a full controlled-access freeway. Now the state is making moves toward sealing off the last at-grade intersections between there and Waverly.

A meeting scheduled for June 2 will go over the environmental assessment (PDF) — not the environmental impact statement, yet — of the corridor. An interchange has been proposed for 260th Street, halfway between Janesville and Waverly. It would be only the third fourth interchange with an all-gravel road in Iowa. The intersection with old 218 on the north side of Janesville would be closed off and a long paved road built to the northwest paralleling the railroad tracks.

The preferred alternative would alter and straighten the present four-lane. (There’s a slight kink that has been there in some form ever since the road was built.) The report linked above provides a taste of just how much work goes into merely thinking about making improvements to a road.

Many of the discarded alternatives included the sentence, “This alternative would increase the out-of- distance travel to Waverly or into Janesville to access U.S. 218 and would have high impacts due to frontage roads.” That’s not good. However, the number of fatalities along this road make the status quo unacceptable, the DOT says.

CORRECTION 6/8: The I-80 Atalissa/Rochester exit is also to a gravel road. (The two I was thinking of were Honey Creek and I-680 Exit 1.)

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May 19

Urbana IA 150 curve will be removed

Posted on Tuesday, May 19, 2015, at 10:14 AM by Jeff


May 20, 2003: The curve seen here heading left (north) will be removed in 2018. In the decade since IA 363’s decommissioning, the ex-state highway has only been known by its county and city names, 55th Street and Sunset Street.

The Iowa DOT will remove the large curve of IA 150 west of Urbana, at former IA 363’s west end, after a two-vehicle collision resulted in the deaths of five people earlier this year. The four-way intersection near the curve will become the main intersection. Construction ($1.5 million) has a target period of fiscal 2018, although this was not included in the draft five-year plan released earlier this week.

The DOT released a 7-page study after the accident (link via Vinton Today website). Three-quarters of the traffic at the intersection runs east-west, heading to/from I-380. Southbound IA 150 will stop and northbound 150 will have a left turn. (The headline below is incorrect; it is not an S-curve.)

 

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May 18

Traer shaker gallery featured in Gazette

Posted on Monday, May 18, 2015, at 10:18 AM by Jeff

Traer’s Salt and Pepper Shaker Gallery was featured in Sunday’s Gazette. Read here (or better yet, if you still can find a Sunday paper, buy it 🙂 ).

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May 16

TEDx Okoboji

Posted on Saturday, May 16, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Thought Leader of Businesstown pays a visit.

(You may need to see the whole set of posts to get the context, and you should. Listen to Weird Al’s “Mission Statement” at the same time to maximize synergy.)

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May 15

‘West Scott’ school district split?

Posted on Friday, May 15, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

This isn’t a horse of a different color, it’s a horse off the spectrum of visible light: Mayors of Blue Grass, Buffalo, and Walcott are interested in splitting their towns away from the Davenport school district, report the Quad-City Times and WQAD. To my knowledge, there has never been a full-fledged rupture of a consolidated district in the modern era.

The enrollment figure given in the story, 1167 students, may only apply to the elementary buildings in the three towns, but even that would crack the top 100 for the state of Iowa.

The Davenport district was in the news recently because its superintendent was vowing to break state law and spend financial reserves. The standoff over next year’s funding in the Legislature isn’t helping that situation, of course, and although there was an attempt to make progress on the specific issue of per-pupil spending discrepancies, it didn’t make it very far.

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May 14

I-74 bridge monument will be preserved

Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2015, at 10:01 AM by Jeff

The official name of the I-74 bridge is the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge, in memory of those who served in World War I. When replacement for the 1935 and 1959 spans is built at the end of this decade, the monument will be relocated, reports WQAD.

Pictures of the plaques and the bridge are viewsble at historicbridges.org.

The marker is in the southeast corner of the intersection of 14th Street (the NB I-74 offramp) and State Street (NB US 67). Semi-recent Google Street View images show trees in the park area, but those have recently been taken down, as you can see in the video.

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May 13

Five-year plan includes completion of four-lane US 20

Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2015, at 10:20 AM by Jeff


June 25, 2006: This little four-lane segment in Iowa, the US 20/59 duplex at Holstein, may not be isolated for much longer.

The Iowa DOT released its draft five-year plan Tuesday (PDF) (press release), and the entire segment of US 20 in western Iowa that isn’t four lanes has been added for construction. The split is at the west Ida/Sac county line, with the portion west to Correctionville programmed for paving in 2016 and east of the line in 2017, closing with the final two lanes from Moville to Correctionville in 2018. If that happens on time, the entire US 20 corridor in Iowa (save for the Julien Dubuque Bridge) would be four lanes 60 years after completion of the first rural segment outside of Moville. (Oct. 19, 2018. There’s the goal.)

Four-laning US 30 in Tama and Benton counties, plus an interchange on Nevada’s west side, are among the projects (with US 20, above) added specifically because of the increase in the state’s gas tax. Curiously, large ROW acquisition is not programmed in Benton County until 2020, perhaps indicating that the grade/pave in 2018 is only for two lanes. Paving in Tama County would be done in 2020. Here are highlights of other projects in the plan:

  • The interchange for US 65/IA 117/IA 330 will be built in 2017-18. Before that, “an intersection conflict warning system is being installed” and should be done before Memorial Day (KCCI). A news story from KIMT in December about a similar system in Minnesota and a PDF from Blue Earth County MN offer a glimpse of what this may look like.
  • Four-laning US 61 from Burlington to the south end of a future Mediapolis bypass, over the next five years (added with new gas tax money)
  • Dubuque’s Southwest Arterial, over the next five years
  • Council Bluffs and Sioux City interstate reconstruction, over the next five years
  • The new I-74 bridge and related construction, in 2018-20
  • The Mount Vernon-Lisbon bypass and IA 100 extension, both over the next four years
  • Rebuilding US 63 in northern Waterloo, changing a railroad underpass to an overpass, over the next two years
  • IA 58/Viking Road interchange in 2017 (an overview of the most recent plan for the IA 58 corridor can be seen here)
  • US 52 Mississippi River bridge replacement next year; an overflow bridge will be replaced later, so get ready for multiple summers of significant detours
  • On I-380, an interchange with Forevergreen Road will be built in 2019 just before a multi-year project begins to replace the cloverleaf interchange with I-80.
  • Also on the cloverleaf front, I-35 and US 30 have work planned for the middle of the period.
  • Six-laning I-35 between IA 160 and the new exit on Ankeny’s north side, in 2018-20
  • IA 146 through Le Grand will be rebuilt in 2018.
  • Conversion of IA 415/NE 66th Street from an old interchange to an intersection, which I mentioned at the beginning of this year, won’t happen until 2019.
  • IA 98’s last hurrah will be its repaving, in 2017, with transfer of jurisdiction planned.
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May 12

Remembering Farragut, Hamburg school buildings

Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The brick once-high-school buildings in Farragut and Hamburg, built in 1924 and 1928, respectively, will close at the end of this year, KMA Radio reports. (Intro, Farragut, Hamburg, conclusion.) The linked articles interview school officials about the inevitability, and teachers for the memories. The closures were required for both school districts to continue whole-grade sharing and functioning, period.

There will be an open house in Farragut Friday at 4, KMA says.

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May 11

Ottumwa has two empty school buildings

Posted on Monday, May 11, 2015, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

A story from KTVO says that one unused school building in Ottumwa (Walsh) “has run the full course of useable life” and another (Wildwood) would cost millions of dollars to renovate for non-class use.

A short Internet search shows that Wildwood Elementary closed after 2013-14 but still is the site for high school softball. A different school building (Pickwick) will be demolished this year.

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