Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

September 8, 2010

‘The one transfer-of-jurisdiction deal in the DOT’s five-year plan that doesn’t happen this summer* is for IA 98 in Van Buren County. According to this article in the Ottumwa Courier, the short highway and $2.3 million will be turned over July 1, 2016, with the option of going earlier. A new bridge over the Des Moines River is being built this summer.

*The Iowa DOT five-year plans are based on fiscal years, not calendar years. Thus, items that are listed for “2015” could start any time after July 1 this year. It can be a little confusing when you consider that method takes up parts of two construction seasons.

Take it away, Internet:

But seriously, Real Soon Now is actually real soon now. There’s actual construction happening on the IA 100 bypass of western Cedar Rapids. It is scheduled to be built in two stages, Edgewood Road to Covington Road and then to US 30/218. It should be done around the end of the decade; the KCRG story embedded below says 2020 but the plan says paving will be done in 2016 and 2018. The Edgewood Road exit will be the state’s second SPUI, after George Mills Parkway on I-35 in West Des Moines.

Also in Linn County, the Mount Vernon/Lisbon bypass is in the five-year plan to be graded in 2017 and built in 2019. That’s some good news for US 30, to counteract the bad news that future four-laning in Benton County will be delayed.

October 13, 2006: The first signs you see after IA 92 enters the state from Illinois are going to change this summer.

A city route that has been a part of the Iowa highway system for more than nine decades will cease to be state-maintained on July 1.

In the DOT’s five-year plan is a “transfer of jurisdiction” line item regarding IA 92 from the southwest corner of the Muscatine bypass to the Norbert Beckey Bridge. The mostly diagonal road following Grandview Avenue and Mississippi Drive has been part of the state highway system since its inception in 1920, becoming part of a multi-state highway numbered 92 in 1939 and carrying US 61 from 1926 to 1984.

In order to keep continuity of the route, IA 92 will be moved onto the US 61 bypass, creating a triplex with US 61 and IA 22 on Muscatine’s north side, and then come south on Park Avenue to the bridge. The transferred road will still be signed as Business 61. If IA 38’s south end gets truncated to the bypass, which is likely since it will be redundant south of there, it will be the third time that it’s been pulled back from downtown Muscatine to that vicinity. It happened before in 1925 and 1969, when there was a Y-intersection near the current one.

The city of Muscatine is accepting of this change because it has wanted to carry out a “Mississippi Drive Corridor Project” to renovate it. The state will give the city $13 million and unload some urban mileage in the process.

This is the first major change in IA 92’s alignment since the Knoxville bypass and new road east to Mahaska County opened in 1978. The four-lane upgrade west of Knoxville and the new South Omaha bridge closely followed existing alignments. The route will be about five miles longer.

More information and photos can be found on the IA 92, IA 38, and Business 61 Muscatine pages as well as my Muscatine highway chronology.

November 21, 2001: The soon-to-be-former west end of unsigned IA 934, University Avenue in Cedar Falls and Waterloo.

There are two big surprises in the DOT’s five-year plan, released Tuesday, and they both have to do with unloading urban arterial streets. First, out of Monday’s Cedar Falls City Council meeting:

Resolution approving and authorizing execution of an Agreement for Transfer of Public Road Jurisdiction with the Iowa Department of Transportation relative to the transfer of jurisdiction for University Avenue/Iowa 934.

Waterloo Courier article here. KWWL story here. A former city councilman says it was “sprung up on us,” which may be true for the actual action but not as to what the state has been trying to do almost since it reasserted control over University Avenue after a lapse in the 1990s. The state would love to drop $20 million on Cedar Falls’ doorstep and get out so fast there’d be skid marks.

Waterloo, however, is not involved in this, so come July 1 (?) there may be a new west end to IA 934 at the city limits. The Courier article notes at the end that the Transportation Commission must approved the deal, presumably when it approves the rest of the five-year plan.

The second surprise is also in eastern Iowa. I’ll have more on that later.