Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

The NCAA Tournament. Church services. Dine-in restaurants. Tulip Time.

And two sessions of Private Pesticide Applicator Continuing Instruction Course in Tama and Traer, the latter of which was supposed to happen tomorrow.

It seems like such a silly, inconsequential thing, but that’s the point. The coronavirus is not leaving anything, anywhere, or anyone unscathed. It doesn’t matter how big or how small, routines and rhythms and parts of daily life we took for granted two weeks ago have been disrupted and we don’t know when or even if they will come back.

This is the third macro-case of “interesting times” my country has had to endure in my adult life. At the risk of sounding like a whiny millennial, I’ve had my fill, thanks.

Related: How do you finish a yearbook if not only there are no events, but school itself is cancelled?

Potential changes to the US 63 corridor from US 6 to Hudson are the subject of a recently released “online meeting” from the Iowa DOT. The video requires a signup and nothing interesting happens in the first two-thirds.

It’s a “Planning and Environmental Linkage” study, which means it is approximately Step Negative 2 in actually doing anything with the highway. The only things in the works are what we already know: Shoulder paving between Traer and Hudson, and a bridge deck overlay on the north side of Traer. Anything that comes out of this would not be tacked on to a five-year plan for years.

The worst pavement ratings on the route are between the Garwin and Gladbrook corners (E29 to IA 96) and Traer to the Black Hawk County line, the latter of which was resurfaced in 1997-98.

Perhaps the most interesting bit was the five-year crash statistics. Of 290 total crashes, nearly 40% of them were “single-vehicle animal”, which I suspect is almost all if not exclusively “hit a deer”.