First story and photos from KWWL; second story and video from KWWL, reminding us that Iowans are awesome.
“We got water in here for all the firemen,” said Toledo Mayor Dave Svoboda. “Somebody brought sandwiches and we had cookies. And everybody comes to help, what they can.”
The dealership (and the other buildings that burned) are right on Highway 63 on the north side of Toledo, so that was closed for a while.
Bryan Farr reached Newport OR yesterday. He put up a picture on Twitter (and a post that only Facebook users can read).
Now comes the other part of his journey: Coming back east to Boston. If he takes any parts of US 20 back, the sun will be much better in the afternoons.
South Dakota is using the bridge at I-29 exit 4 in South Dakota to build a levee across the interstate and try to save North Sioux City from flooding.
There are two different detours in place. One goes through the northeast corner of Nebraska and Vermillion, while another MUCH longer one uses I-90, I-35, and I-80. I-35 was used as a detour for I-29 in 2011, too, when floods hit western Iowa.
The Sioux Falls Argus Leader asked about the long detour, and got a response that all interstates “must be connected”.
The first president born west of the Mississippi River and the only one born in Iowa takes his turn in the Mint’s release cycle.
Starting last month, Sports Illustrated started a series on “History of the NFL in 95 Objects” to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the founding of the National Football League.
One of the “objects” SI selected is the Cedar Falls Hy-Vee store Kurt Warner worked at before the St. Louis Rams took a chance on him and he became a Super Bowl-winning quarterback (and sparkly Disney Channel series guest star).
It’s a great gesture, and it’s good to see something of Iowa represented in this, but there’s one little tweak: That’s not quite Kurt Warner’s Hy-Vee. That building was right next door. The chain redeveloped and moved into the old Wal-Mart space connected to College Square Mall in 2006.
It’s the thought that counts, though, and while the physical building might be different the story of a grocery stocker who rose to such heights is still something to share. I just wanted to set the record straight.
(Related note: Warner’s Rams won the Super Bowl six years after moving from LA and 14 years before the present. That’s your, and my, “feeling old” stat for today.)
October 13, 2006: IA 92’s entry from Illinois
In a couple of weeks, IA 92 will be rerouted around the Muscatine bypass and down Park Avenue to continue into Illinois. This means that the route will not have any independent segment east of Grandview, but the four-state number continuity will remain. I asked a DOT district engineer what the plan was for IA 38, since the number would no longer be needed south of the bypass. He said the 38 designation would remain down to the bridge, as seen above. (IA 92 will turn right instead of left.)
That means Iowa will have its second highway quad-plex: Park Avenue running south from US 61 to Washington Street will carry eastbound IA 22, eastbound IA 92, southbound IA 38, and southbound Business 61. South of there, it will be IA 38/92 plus Business 61 to the bridge. The north part of the bypass itself will have the triplex of US 61 and IA 22/92.
Keeping IA 38 down to its current end point could be a paperwork issue as much as anything, since the documentation for Park Avenue projects can still be filed under 38. It was redundantly signed down from the northeast corner of Muscatine from the mid-1930s to 1969, too. Or it could be that this keeps one number signed north-south on a north-south street. Regardless, 38’s end won’t be changed as part of 92’s reroute.
It isn’t quite radio silence, but there hasn’t been much of anything in the way of news regarding the new US 34 bridge over the Missouri River. This online collection of images, for example, has one set from last July for all of 2013. Aerial photos from 2013 show the approaches constructed, and the DOT put out a letting for signage, so that is some sort of progress for a project that would have been done last year but still is suffering from delays of flooding in 2011.
Late last month, though, one piece of information did escape. Nebraska submitted an application to AASHTO’s committee on highway numbering to move US 34. It’s on the link from this page, although it’s a Word file instead of a PDF and contains embedded links to PDFs of individual applications. Anyway, that document says the opening will be in November 2014. (I’d bet on it opening days before Thanksgiving.)
US 34 will still exit Iowa from Mills County, but will now enter Sarpy County NE before heading south into Cass County NE. This is the first time a highway leaving Iowa has been rerouted into a different county since US 61/151 were routed through East Dubuque for two decades. The change will increase US 34’s duplex with US 75 from 13 miles to about 19.
Over the past five years, guide signs at Iowa’s interstate interchanges have been revamped with an eye for modern-day driving needs. The last major stretches of interstate will be switching over this summer, and the style will spread to other four-lane roads as replacement cycles warrant.
Since the beginnings of the interstate highway system in Iowa, there had been a standard pattern at cross roads. Each interchange had independent shields arranged on poles/brackets, with mileages given to two “control cities” (major cities on the freeway) and often a third location on the intersecting route. If the intersecting route was a state or US highway, a shield indicating such would be included in at least one assembly. Examples are shown below:
This style was in marked contrast to Minnesota, Illinois, and Missouri, all of which used at least one large, single-panel BGS-type sign for interchanges, and none of which included distances.
Starting in 2009, the Iowa Department of Transportation began moving away from this form. The 2009 Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD, omits inclusion of mileage at interstate crossroads. The specifications overall use larger (Clearview) letters, and there is obviously a greater visibility of a single-panel green sign than individual shields. For more details, click on the jump.
(from the Des Moines inset)
I like clean maps, so this is something that is nice to see. There’s a little spot of Polk County between Johnston and Urbandale that both cities somehow overlooked during their torrid growth. It’s inconvenient for Polk County to respond to the area, and so there is an effort underway for Johnston to annex that little rectangle.
On a related note, Waukee and Clive may be ironing out their lines along Alice’s Road.
(As for that long, populated strip of Polk County between Aurora Avenue and I-35/80 that so obviously should belong to Des Moines…don’t ask.)
