Coralville road closure adds to traffic detours

CORALVILLE – Another important north-south road has closed in the Iowa City metro area, but this one is not due to the weather.

The section of Coralville's 12

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Avenue over Interstate 80 was closed Monday for repair work.

Iowa City's Dubuque Street is closed just south of the interstate because of flooding. The goal is to have it reopened early next week, said Rick Fosse, Iowa City's public works director.

The new closure means increased traffic headaches for drivers. Twelfth Avenue is a popular route to and from North Liberty and Coralville north of I-80.

“We have already noticed people being late because they have to reroute,” Tara Giberson, a stylist at Lotus Salon, which is about one mile north of the construction site, said early Monday afternoon.

She planned to send an email to clients making them aware of the closure.

The 12

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Avenue bridge work is an Iowa Department of Transportation project. The DOT and the city of Coralville discussed whether to delay it because of the closure of Dubuque Street, but that would risk pushing construction into next school year, which could be a bigger nuisance for drivers, said Scott Larson, Coralville's assistant city engineer.

The bridge is to be closed until June 26 to patch the bridge deck and retrofit the barrier rails, he said. A 30-day break is needed to let the concrete strengthen, and then the bridge is to be closed July 29-Aug. 2 to finish the job.

“It's not as simple as saying, ‘Let's push it off for two weeks and see if Dubuque Street opens,' because there's a 30-day waiting period,” Larson said.

The 1210,300 vehicles a day in 2010, the most recent traffic count from the DOT.

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Avenue bridge saw an average of

The section of Dubuque Street that is closed had more than 21,000 vehicles a day on average in 2010.

A lot of that traffic, and now that from 12

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Avenue, is detouring to First Avenue in Coralville. The First Avenue-Highway 6 intersection is the second-busiest in Johnson County.

After Dubuque Street closed late last month, transportation planners in both cities adjusted the traffic signals on Highway 6 at First Avenue and at Hawkins Drive to accommodate the increased traffic, said John Yapp, transportation planner for Iowa City and executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County.

He said since the University of Iowa and K-12 school years ended, traffic has stabilized. He agreed that the right decision was to go ahead with the 12

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Avenue bridge work.

“Summertime is the best time to close things,” he said. “There's just less overall traffic in general.”

The pedestrian portion of the 12th Avenue bridge will remain open during construction.