By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A route to Nebraska from I-29 has re-opened after the Iowa Department of Transportation took a page out of the US Forest Service notebook.
I-DOT Engineer Austin Yates says the agency used a Forest Service emergency road repair technique to get traffic flowing over Highway 2, between I-29 and Nebraska City.
Yates says I-DOT understands floodwaters could once again close the road.
“We’re always continually monitoring that,” Yates tells St. Joseph Post. “Number one is safety, so if that water does start coming up, unfortunately, we would close the rock roads if water would be threatening them, but certainly that’s something we wouldn’t do lightly, but also we would not hesitate to do it.”
Yates says I-DOT reviewed how the Forest Service worked to move traffic over some of the rougher roads it maintains. On the portion of Highway 2 heavily damaged by floodwaters, the contractor sunk a corrugated metal culvert and piled three-inch rock on top of it with a layer of fabric with road rock dumped on top of that. Concrete barriers, often called Jersey barriers, line both sides of Highway 2, holding back deep floodwaters from the Missouri River. The westbound lanes opened May 10th with the eastbound lanes opening five days later.
Permanent repairs to Highway 2 are planned for this summer. Yates says I-DOT plans to raise the roadway about 16 inches over the portion most prone to flooding.
The emergency repairs allow a path from east to west as the Missouri Department of Transportation works to repair roads leading to the Brownville and Rulo bridges to Nebraska.
Yates says floodwaters didn’t cause as much damage to I-29 as he had feared. He says though the route was closed quite a while in southwest Iowa, I-DOT moved as quickly as it could to re-open the major thoroughfare.
“Pick up a lot of traffic from I-80 in Omaha, pick up a lot of traffic on I-29 at I-90 in Sioux Falls. It’s a heavy freight corridor,” Yates says. “Down near St. Joe, we know we see about 17,000 vehicles a day is the normal traffic.”
Trucks make up about half of that traffic.
While traffic is moving again on I-29, traffic is not back to normal. Portions of the interstate are being repaired, especially between Hamburg, Iowa and Highway 2.
Yates cautions motorists that many of the food and fuel stops they have relied on in the past are still recovering from flood damage, limiting gas station, convenient stores, and fast-food restaurant availability along the way between St. Joseph and the Omaha/Council Bluffs area.
“Just be aware that services are limited in that stretch of I-29,” Yates reminds drivers.