I-29 remains closed north of St. Joseph and is likely to remain closed for awhile

By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

MoDOT photo of I-29 at the 104 mm in March.

I-29 north of St. Joseph remains closed and likely will remain closed for quite some time.

Missouri Department of Transportation Area Engineer Adam Watson says Missouri closed the interstate at Highway 71, because there was nowhere for the heavy traffic I-29 carries to go once it reached the state line. Watson says Iowa transportation officials are working hard to repair the damage done by floodwaters.

“They were anticipating that by Memorial Day or quicker they would be able to open up I-29 into Iowa in which case we would open up I-29 completely, because there would be somewhere to go through to,” Watson tells St. Joseph Post.

Missouri is working to repair damage leading to the two bridges across the Missouri River into Nebraska. Watson says if Iowa cannot get repairs to I-29 done as quickly as they hope, those bridges into Nebraska would allow Missouri to re-open at least a portion of the interstate.

I-29 carries approximately 12,000 cars and trucks daily, with an emphasis on trucks. Heavy semi tractor-trailers use I-29 as their primary north-south route in the Midwest. With I-29 closed in northwest Missouri and southeast Iowa, those trucks have been diverted to other highways.

MoDOT advises travelers wishing to go north to use I-35 to I-80, back across to I-29 or at least take U.S. Highway 71 just north of St. Joseph. MoDOT has closed I-29 at the Highway 71 intersection.

But, truck drivers have taken a number of different routes and large trucks hauling rock and other material used to repair flood-damaged roads are traveling throughout northwest Missouri as well as northeast Kansas.

Watson gives a short answer to the question of whether MoDOT worries diverted interstate traffic is damaging other roadways.

“We’re not worried about it. We know that it is.”

Watson says it is hard to quantify how much damage has been done to other roads by traffic normally traveling I-29.

“We’ve already seen routes that we were intending to do a preventative maintenance treatment on, something to seal cracks to keep it going for a couple more years before we do a more serious rehabilitation,” Watson says. “We’ve already seen roads where we’ve said, yeah, that preventative maintenance treatment is not even an option any more, we are well into rehabilitation or rebuilding parts of these roads.”

Watson says Iowa transportation officials hope to repair I-29 in time for Memorial Day weekend traffic.

MoDOT maintains a website on the flood damage in northwest Missouri, you can access it by clicking here.