Jun 07

Captain Kirk’s birthplace moved

Posted on Monday, June 7, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, the most famous Iowan who hasn’t been born yet, isn’t where it used to be. Or not where it was supposed to will have been. (“I hate temporal mechanics,” said the Miles O’Briens. Mileses O’Brien?)

It’s still in Riverside, but had to move because the of the new property owner’s wishes, reports the Southeast Iowa Union. Remember, we’re talking about the Original Timeline, not the 2009 alternate reality where Kirk is born in an escape shuttle less than a minute before the USS Kelvin blows up.

If you come hundreds of light years to see where one of the greatest starship captains of all time was born, what’s a block off, really?

EDIT: REALLY, YouTube? Really?

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Jun 04

Four-lane US 30 in Tama County open

Posted on Friday, June 4, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Ten years and nine days after what I think is the first announcement about it, the new four-lane US 30 in Tama County from Tama to near IA 21 opened Thursday Wednesday*. (Story: Tama-Toledo News Chronicle) This is a complete shift off the existing road, which will be torn up over the rest of the summer. The little “hiccup” along the straight line made decades ago for a bridge just west of 21 has temporarily become where new meets old.

I was hoping for a press release or something beforehand, so I’ll have to come up with in-depth content after the fact.

The 2021 map isn’t two weeks old and already needs a change. I wonder if they’ll put it in any time soon.

* UPDATE 8/6/21: To harmonize with a note on the Iowa Highways Page, I’ve modified the opening to one day earlier.

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Jun 03

Dubuque highway chronology updated

Posted on Thursday, June 3, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

IF
August 23, 2020: Southeast corner of the Southwest Arterial at US 61, looking northwest. Note the wrong-way multiplex. The city names look seriously undersized to me. I would’ve made them larger and put them on the same line (“Dubuque / Bellevue”).

In tandem-ish with noting the release of the new state map, I realized that I had not touched my Dubuque Highway Chronology. I put it off until the Southwest Arterial opened, then, well, my second two-thirds of August was a little tricky to navigate.

I had to do some font tweaking. Although I did not include IA 32 on the page, because it focuses on the downtown area, I placed a mention at the end. Unfortunately, neither Jason Hancock nor I found out an exact date the signs came down, just that it was earlier this year.

The main update is to the bottom two maps, with the final one being advanced a bit due to the arterial not opening before 2020 began. The KCRG story about the arterial is here.

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Jun 01

Notes on 2021 Iowa map

Posted on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I guess Map Day is officially the Friday of Memorial Day weekend now. Here’s the big new PDF.

  • Dubuque’s Southwest Arterial is marked on both the main map and Dubuque inset. IA 32 is dead, US 52 has been removed from the city, and IA 3’s east end is at the now-former north end of 32, which is a logical place for it. The arterial has the full-size freeway line, which I wouldn’t be surprised to see reduced to a thinner line like IA 100 later.
  • The US 30/US 218 interchange is marked, and has exit number 231.
  • On the Waterloo-Cedar Falls inset, the IA 58 expressway has the Viking Road interchange and IA 27’s exit numbers on it.
  • Pioneer, in the southwest corner of Humboldt County, is now an unincorporated dot.
  • One thing it doesn’t have: 2020 city populations in the index. Will there be a stealth 2022 update that changes the index and, if necessary, city dot sizes?

Is that it? I’m not sure. I can’t think of anything else to jump out that wasn’t already on the 2019 or stealth-updated 2020 version. I would be hard-pressed to come up with “several hundred” to be sure. Shout out if you see something.

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May 28

Names are hard

Posted on Friday, May 28, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Traer Star-Clipper, September 26, 1930, notes added:

New service station to open about Nov. 1
Wieck Bros. plan largest and best-equipped structure of its kind in town — work now in progress

Rapid progress is being made on the construction of Traer’s sixth gasoline filling station [1]. The foundation and basement were completed last week. It is hoped to have the entire building ready to open for business November 1.

Fred and Paul Wieck, brothers, are erecting and will operate the new station on ground they recently purchased from John Mowery, located on the west side of primary 59 on the north edge of town. They have contracted to handle the products of the Sinclair Refining company, which has no official station here. [2]

No name has yet been selected for the new Wieck station. [3] The building is expected to be larger and finer and any of its kind yet built in Traer. …

The most modern equipment obtainable will be used throughout the station, the Wiecks have announced. They expect to sell cigars, candy and soft drinks as part of their business.

[1] Six! Traer had three gas stations into the 2000s but the one on the south side of town closed about a decade ago.

[2] It is a Sinclair station today, but not continuously. In 1940, the facility was expanded with a larger auto service area that remained in use until the 2000s.

[3] The eventual name chosen for the station was …

…

Wieck Bros.

Posted in Tama County | Comments Off on Names are hard
May 27

The unbelievable part of ‘Superman and Lois’

Posted on Thursday, May 27, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The whole super powers thing? I’m basically a Superman apologist (Synderverse excepted). Clark Kent at his gosh-darn-shucks-iest moving back to the family farm and town he loves? I will eat that up. Star reporter quitting in statement fashion in light of corporate actions? Lois Lane hasn’t been one to retreat from a challenge for a few decades now (post-Comics Code Authority era, and even then, she still got crafty). A small-town newspaper with only one person on staff until Lois shows up? Extremely accurate nowadays, and wait until she finds out about Substack.

But Smallville’s football team playing Metropolis? Public Metropolis? Not, say, Metropolis Christian or Metropolis Newman? Location issues aside — and not to mention it being a day game — that is a bridge too far.

Besides, given other scenes in the episode, Metropolis is WAY too big to be a one-high-school city, anyway. 😛

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May 26

Mocking Iowa’s 2020s congressional districts (4)

Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Census Bureau released its county-by-county estimates on May 4. By “released”, I mean “said in advance they would be available but I had to dig into nested folders and stumble on a straight-outta-1995 icon list that led me to a CSV file containing year-by-year estimates for every county in the United States, copy rows T807-T906, and paste them into my pre-existing mock-district spreadsheet.”

Then came the biggest takeaways:

  • The July 1, 2020 estimate (NOT the April 1 head count) adds 8491 people from the 2019 estimates, for a state estimate of approximately 3.16 million, and an ideal congressional district population of 2122 more each.
  • The vast majority of Iowa’s 99 counties changed up or down by fewer than 200 people … except Polk and Dallas, which combined grew by 7630 — nearly 1% of a district! Nine and a half people moved to Dallas County every day.
  • That, and 2600 more people in Johnson County, blew up every map I’d made.
  • Notice that the estimated growth in those three combined is greater than the growth in the state estimate. The other 97 counties lost 1739.

While these numbers are closer to what will be used for creating Iowa’s districts, they aren’t exact. Keeping that in mind, let’s see how out of whack my maps got thrown.

Mock 1: Hinson’s nightmare (map)

Mock 2: Incumbent-safe (map)

Mock 4: The Marshall County Dangler (map)

Mock 5: Weird within adjusted parameters (map)

Mock 7: Double gerrymander (map)

So, yeah, everything went seriously off except for Mock 1 Districts 1 and 4 — the map that scrambles incumbents and separates Polk and Dallas counties — and Mock 2 District 1. However, every individual district meets the 1% deviation percentage variance threshold, as do Mock 1 and, ironically, the gerrymander maps. The rightmost columns for the 2011 districts were 76 and 0.01%.

It’s back to the map mines until the actual numbers come in September. Iowa’s Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission still needs a fifth appointee. It’s, like, three meetings, right? Would I have to submit conflicts of interest?

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May 25

Casualties along the Tenderloin Trail

Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Iowa Pork dreamed up the Tenderloin Trail, a checklist of Iowa’s establishments serving the classic breaded tenderloin sandwich, in 2017. The checklist needs to be completed by July 1, according to Iowa Pork’s website.

But not all the servers on the trail made it to the end.

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May 24

Niland’s is back, again, again

Posted on Monday, May 24, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Niland’s Cafe in Colo, a classic feature along the Lincoln Highway, has reopened for the second time in three years.

The cafe closed in late 2018, then reopened in 2019, then closed again in mid-2020. Earlier this month it came back yet again (Ames Tribune), with more seating but a smaller menu for homemade food.

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May 21

Notes on 2022-26 five-year plan (2)

Posted on Friday, May 21, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Major and/or interesting things in the Iowa Transportation Commission’s five-year program, continued:

  • New IA 9 bridge over the Mississippi River at Lansing in 2024, but removal of the present one in 2026 (which, because all of these are fiscal years, could be the second half of 2025).
  • Replacement of concrete on US 20 between IA 58 and US 63, the next step of this year’s construction project, in 2024.
  • Conversion of US 218/IA 27 between Janesville and Waverly to full freeway, including a smoother slope at 260th Street, in 2025.
  • Six-laning I-35 between Ankeny and IA 210, paving in 2024-25.
  • US 61: As previously detailed here.
  • I-380: New Tower Terrace Road exit in 2023, rebuilt Boyson Road exit in 2025.
  • IA 330 shoulder paving between US 30 and Albion in 2022, which is extremely interesting simply because the shoulders on that road are practically nonexistent. In fact, they tried this or a version of this nine years ago.
  • US 63 northwest bypass of Oskaloosa in 2026. The interchange will be on IA 163 between the present Leighton and old IA 432 corners and the road will go northeast to just south of the South Skunk River bridge.
  • An “enhanced four-lane roadway” of US 75 through Sioux Center will be in 2024 (calendar 2023-24). This urban project first got on the state’s radar in 2019 and would be finished in 2025. The project (PDF from city) adds a thin median to the present street, with turn lanes. A historic building tight at a corner downtown became a complication, but it will stay. A modification was made for the “misalignment” of 2nd Street S — the streets on either side don’t quite meet at the same place — but comparing Street View vs. the city PDF, it came at the cost of the house at 209 S. Main Ave.
Posted in Construction | Comments Off on Notes on 2022-26 five-year plan (2)