Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Because IA 86 north of IA 9 wasn’t state-maintained until 1980, it has a lot of characteristics of a county road, including a lack of shoulders. The road was taken by the state as its importance as a connector to I-90 grew.

Next year the DOT plans to shut down and rebuild the whole road north of IA 9. The Spencer Daily Reporter notes that this will include leaving some of the old road behind to create a straighter connection to Minnesota.

Real, tangible evidence of progress (2011 USDA aerials via Iowa Ortho Server)

Decades in the planning, it’s almost here — parts of it anyway. The final relocation of US 20 (but not the final four-lane paving) is on schedule. The five-year plan is down to the customary last two entries of any such project: pavement rehab and erosion control in 2013. That means that if everything goes well, all of new 20 may be open either by the end of this year or the end of next year. The official plan is to get the part east of County Road N14/extended IA 196 open this fall. There will be an interchange there.

“Pavement rehab” is generally repaving the old alignment the year after the new one opens, taking traffic off the route and enabling the turnover of the road to the county — in this case, old 20 west of IA 4. (Sac, Calhoun, and Webster counties all had to agree to take the old road before the new would be built. No two-decade-old IA 920 here.) Related to that: IA 196 will have about a mile around the current 20 intersection paved in 2014.

The four-lane gap will then be closed from the west. A two-step process will upgrade the road between Moville and Correctionville, with grading in 2014 and 2017 and some paving in 2016 (and then, presumably, 2018, to finish the job). The highway in Correctionville, around the intersection with IA 31, will be upgraded to a five-lane configuration. That will leave the 32 miles between Correctionville and Early.

There are two major projects planned in eastern Iowa on US 20, too: An interchange in Dyersville just west of the Delaware/Dubuque county line with a relocated X49 in 2015, and an interchange with Seippel Road southwest of Dubuque. The latter is interesting because Seippel Road didn’t even intersect US 20 until the 1990s, and there is nothing there right now. However, the Menards to the northeast is the first stoplight on 20 east of Sac City (soon, the first stoplight on 20 since O’Neill NE, period) and Olde Highway Road, the pre-1950s route of 20 that goes to Centralia, intersects in such a way that an interchange there is not feasible.

As noted in the previous post, the Iowa DOT released its five-year draft May 8. The only items for the I-74 Mississippi River bridge area concerned right-of-way and some paving. There had been $63 million set aside for bridge construction, but that was dropped because Illinois had not budgeted any money in the next five years on its side — until a week ago.

Now, the Quad-City Times says, Illinois has put it back in and “local officials hope that investment will convince Iowa to maintain its construction funding.” A month earlier would have made it much easier to be convinced.

Where is Iowa going to pull that $63 million back from? A possible source is from the projects highlighted in the press release that either were new or moved up a year.

It’s interesting that Illinois is saying, or hoping, that this paint job on the I-74 bridge will be the last, although to be fair the last big job was 15 years ago. Iowa still has money programmed for bridge rehab in 2015 and 2017. This will also be another project to watch.

This is a timed post.

The Iowa DOT’s draft five-year plan released this month still puts the big money toward urban interstate projects, but it has a couple of surprises inside.

One of the projects of note is IA 58 and Viking Road in Cedar Falls, labeled as a future interchange in the press release. I know the area, and have one huge question: How do you cram an interchange in there?

Here’s what the intersection looks like today (via ortho.gis.iastate.edu). The Target in the southeast quadrant was the last to fill in the area. Everything except half the buildings in the southwest quadrant, and the one building on the west side of the frontage road in the northwest quadrant, is less than 15 years old. The trail running along the east side is relatively new too.

Right now, there’s only one entry in the construction plan: Grade and pave in 2016, $16 million. No right of way acquisition, no “bridge new” — two things that usually come before or at the same time if an interchange is being built. The listing does say “State share,” so it’s possible that the city of Cedar Falls is handling those aspects.

Compare that area with the future interchange of US 218 and C50 (PDF) to the north in Janesville, which is comparatively sparse development-wise, yet will move the entire expressway over to the east. Continue reading →