Land acquisition for Highway 100 sought

Backers of the Highway 100 extension in Linn County are hopeful the state will begin land acquisition for the project in their next five-year plan.

“If they were to put right-of-way language in the five-year plan, that would be a home run for us,” Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said after joining a Highway 100 delegation at the Iowa Transportation Commission meeting in Marshalltown Tuesday morning.

The project would extend Highway 100 west from Edgewood Road about four miles, crossing the Cedar River, then drop south to connect to U.S. 30 west of the city.

The Iowa Department of Transportation is expected to select an outside engineering firm to design the Cedar River bridge within the next few weeks, according to Cathy Cutler, Iowa Department of Transportation District 6 planner in Cedar Rapids.

The DOT also will tap an outside engineering firm for the first phase of the roadway design later this year, Cutler said. The initial phase will go about four miles west from the Edgewood Road intersection to County Road W-36. The contract will include an option to extend the work to cover the design of the roadway southward to U.S. 30, a distance of about four more miles.

Funding is the big obstacle to the project now that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement was approved in 2008. The eight-mile bypass is expected to cost more than $120 million.

Corbett said the local community understands that the commission has much greater demand for projects than it has the ability to fund because gas tax revenues have been lagging. He said the reallocation of $2.9 million in road funds from Cedar Rapids city projects to Highway 100 in January sent a message to the transportation commission that the city planned to shoulder its share of the project.

“It was a key to breaking a log jam on the DOT commission in making this a “go” versus a “no-go,” Corbett said.

The Iowa Transportation Commission updates its five-year plan every year. Highway 100 didn't make it in the last plan, which was approved in June 2009. Features of the new plan are expected to be firmed up at the commission's May meeting, and finalized in June.

The project had already received a federal earmark of $950,000 requested by U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Mount Vernon. With the additional $2.9 million reallocated to the project, the Iowa Department of Transportation has had nearly %4 million for design work for the project. Project backers thanked the commission for moving forward on the design at Tuesday's meeting. They included Linn County supervisors Lu Barron and Linda Langston, and Cedar Rapids City Council members Justin Shields and Monica Vernon, in addition to Corbett.

The extension still faces opposition from some local residents and others concerned how rare species in the nearby Rock Island Preserve will be affected.

Sierra Club spokesman Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids said opposition hasn't wavered. He said project backers are “trying to get their foot in the door” by getting land acquisition funded for the project. Once the land is acquired for the project, they believe it is much less likely that the commission will delay the project, Taylor said.