Construction of an interchange for US 218\/IA 27 at County Road C57, which just started, will make the corridor between Janesville and Cedar Falls a full controlled-access freeway. Now the state is making moves toward sealing off the last at-grade intersections between there and Waverly.<\/p>\n
A meeting scheduled for June 2<\/a> will go over the environmental assessment<\/a>\u00a0(PDF) \u2014 not<\/em> the environmental impact statement, yet \u2014 of the corridor. An interchange has been proposed for 260th Street, halfway between Janesville and Waverly. It would be only the The preferred alternative would alter and straighten the present four-lane. (There’s a slight kink that has been there in some form<\/a> ever since the road was built.) The report linked above provides a taste of just how much work goes into merely thinking<\/em> about making improvements to a road.<\/p>\n Many of the discarded alternatives included the sentence, “This alternative would increase the out-of- distance travel to Waverly or into Janesville to access U.S. 218 and would have high impacts due to frontage roads.” That’s not good. However, the number of fatalities along this road make the status quo unacceptable, the DOT says.<\/p>\n CORRECTION 6\/8: The I-80 Atalissa\/Rochester exit is also to a gravel road. (The two I was thinking of were Honey Creek and I-680 Exit 1.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Construction of an interchange for US 218\/IA 27 at County Road C57, which just started, will make the corridor between Janesville and Cedar Falls a full controlled-access freeway. Now the state is making moves toward sealing off the last at-grade … Continue reading third<\/del> fourth interchange with an all-gravel road in Iowa. The intersection with old 218 on the north side of Janesville would be closed off and a long paved road built to the northwest paralleling the railroad tracks.<\/p>\n