Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

May 30, 2003: The standard right-turn lane to Atkins is no longer sufficient for traffic needs.

From the category of “construction projects that should have happened a decade ago but didn’t,” there are two little ones that could provide big relief.

First, a LONG right-turn lane is being built on US 30/218 at the Atkins corner (old IA 279). Atkins has become a bedroom community for Cedar Rapids and there is a lot of traffic returning at the end of the day. Now if E Avenue could get paved from Atkins east to IA 100, that would be an improvement as well.

Second, a right-turn lane is being built in Dysart from eastbound IA 8/21 to southbound IA 21. It’s extraordinarily odd/stupid that one has never been built, especially since that’s the flow of IA 21. Its emergence now, I think, is for a better connection to US 30. Drivers that otherwise went through Vinton to get to 30 and avoid the two-lane west of there, myself included, can now go down 21 to pick up the four-lane.

KCRG reports that Boyson Road at I-380 will be closed for weeks starting Monday. There does not appear to be a corresponding press release on the Iowa DOT’s site. KCRG says it’s for “20 working days” so that’ll be four weeks. After that, though, the northbound entrance ramp will remain closed.

Northbound I-380 traffic will need to exit at Blairs Ferry Road and southbound traffic will need to exit at Tower Terrace Road or go down to Blairs Ferry Road and turn around.

As of last Thursday, based on a press release from the city of Cedar Rapids, a devil’s circle roundabout has opened downtown at Mount Vernon Road SE/10th Street SE/8th Avenue SW. This intersection is where the “cutoff” for the Lincoln Highway turned from Mount Vernon Road to 10th Street and then, between 1940 and 1953, US 30 turned from Mount Vernon Road to 8th Avenue. The bridge built for that alignment of 30 is the one scheduled to be replaced by the end of the decade (maybe).

While I strenuously oppose the widespread use of roundabouts, there are occasional places they might make a tiny bit of sense, and non-perpendicular intersections constitute one of those places. However, the city of Cedar Rapids is going roundabout-crazy and announced nearly a dozen of them in 2023. This one, along with what was a four-way stop at Wilson Avenue and Bowling Street SW, was on that list.

Another on that list, which hasn’t started yet but should in the near future, is Johnson Avenue NW and 18th Street NW. The city’s project page links to both the slides and fact sheet are 404’d, but there is a YouTube video that goes through the slides. The video is two years old, and said things would happen in 2025, but it’s the middle of summer and nothing has happened yet. We should probably believe the project page that says construction won’t happen until 2026.

Anyway, the key here is not necessarily that the intersection of Johnson and 18th is going to become a roundabout, but that B Avenue west of 18th Street will be turned into a cul-de-sac. In 1930, 18th Street was the west city limit of Cedar Rapids, and building a B Avenue extension was an Iowa Highway Commission project as part of realigning US 30 through the city in 1931. US 30 was then taken off B in 1938.

The intersection of 18th and Johnson became a four-way stop in 2020, and at the same time just to the north, interestingly enough, 18th became the through street instead of B Avenue, which used to be US 30.

In 2016, construction prevented me from clinching US 30 in Nebraska. Then, in 2023, a new four-lane 30 opened from the north side of Fremont to Columbus. (Contrary to expectations in my blog post, a truck relief route in Blair is only signed as that, and 30’s route has remained unchanged. Slightly less contrary to that blog post is my limited travel budget, since I was just slammed with a 12% rent increase.)

Now a new four-lane alignment of US 30 is being built on the west side of Grand Island. When KSNB covered the start of the project in April 2024, the expected completion date was July 2026.

After that, of course, the Missouri Valley bypass will be constructed, but completion of that won’t be until 2029.

In 2019, a construction project on the west side of Clinton sealed off an old routing of US 30 that retained original concrete. Now another project in the same area is obliterating historic concrete altogether.

Reconstruction of Manufacturing Drive started in March and will last two years. The entire road from US 30 to College Avenue is being ripped up and replaced.

The city appears to believe that “some of the sections of the road are over 100 years old,” since reporters use that phrasing in both a Clinton Herald story and a WHBF story — and it’s not true. Manufacturing Drive is nearly 100 years old. It did not exist until it was built in 1931 as a new alignment of US 30.

Looking at Google Street View from 2022, some of the two-lane concrete along parts of Manufacturing Drive that has more visible aggregate (rocks) in its composition would date to 1931. Its age is harder to pinpoint either because the raised-edge “Iowa Curbs” have long ago been shorn off or because by that time, the curbs were no longer included. I haven’t tracked down that many pieces of extant Depression-era paving to know.

Bluff Boulevard, at least the section used as the Lincoln Highway (5th Avenue South to 19th Street), was paved in 1921. However, I completely doubt that any concrete in use today on that stretch is original, because there’s no visible aggregate, the road is too wide (it wouldn’t have been three lanes, let alone four), and it has modern drainage features.

This is another construction project discovered in preparation for the Lincoln Highway Middle Third Tour. If I’d known that the concrete was that old and was going to be lost, I would’ve taken pictures.

The IA 9/WI 82 Black Hawk Bridge across the Mississippi River at Lansing reopened Monday after being closed since May 17. The Iowa DOT said in its press release that another long-term closure is expected this summer and the water taxi service that was restarted for the just-ended unexpected closure will continue.

I have questions about this sequence of sentences from the Des Moines Register’s coverage:

The Black Hawk Bridge reopened on the morning of June 9. The bridge is the only way to cross the river in the nearly 60-mile stretch between La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, according to the Milwaukee Journal.

Residents on both sides of the river use the bridge for commuting between the two states.

The bridge is the only connection in a 60-mile stretch. The nearest bridges connect La Crosse, Wisconsin, and La Crescent, Minnesota, about 35 miles to the north or Marquette, Iowa, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, about 30 miles to the south.

As a journalist, “attribute early, attribute often” is important, but the fact that the Black Hawk Bridge is the only crossing in a 60-mile stretch of the Mississippi River is just that, a verifiable fact. Secondly, why is it being restated in the same way two sentences later?

The interesting part of the DOT press release about the closure of US 30 west of Ogden starting Monday is that it mentions a concrete overlay project instead of the usual asphalt overlay.

But if you live anywhere in the area, or are going to be driving either road, the official detours for both US 30 and US 169 are looooong.

Southbound 169 between 30 and E57 will be the detour for westbound 30. Westbound E57 past Berkley to Rippey, and then IA 144 north to Grand Junction, will be the detour for westbound 30 and northbound 169. At that point 30 will resume its regular route while northbound 169 will continue its detour north on 144 to Dana and then east on E26.

The Lincoln Highway Middle Third Tour is avoiding this construction by following the 1914-1922 version of the route, which is one mile north of 30 on gravel 210th Street. The question is, how many local drivers will be doing the same thing?