$5.6 million added to Highway 100 expansion

CEDAR RAPIDS — Construction is well underway on the long-awaited, 7.5-mile, $200 million project to extend Highway 100 from Edgewood Road NE west and south to Highway 30.

But the final highway design does not include a connection that city officials think is vital for the growth that the highway extension is expected to fuel.

As a result, today the City Council will discuss signing cooperative agreements with the Iowa Department of Transportation that will add $5.6 million of work to the project. That work will permit 80th Street SW access by adding an on-ramp from 80th Street SW to Highway 100 just north of Highway 30, and an exit ramp from Highway 100 to 80th Street SW just south of Highway 30.

The two additional ramps will allow traffic north and south of Highway 30 to more easily get on and off Highway 100 without having to use the planned interchange a mile to the north at E Avenue NW, Rob Davis, the city's engineering operations manager, said on Monday.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said the DOT has agreed to the project modifications with one caveat: The entire $5.6 million in expense will be the city of Cedar Rapids' responsibility, not the DOT's.

Pomeranz said the city had asked for the DOT to share in the costs for the additional ramps, but the DOT said the access was a local one.

'We started with no access, and we ended up with access at city costs. We understand, and we're moving forward,' the city manager said.

In the short term, the city plans to spend $400,000 to design the two new ramps from funds the city has on hand, Davis said.

Beyond that, he said the $5.2 million in construction work is apt to be spent in phases. $3.2 million will be used for grading, building retaining walls and widening bridges, with $2 million spent later to construct the ramps when growth in the area requires it. The highway isn't expected to be open until 2020, so building the additional ramps is a few years away at least, he said.

'If we don't do it now, we may preclude it from ever being done,' Davis said. 'And even it's not precluded, it could be two to three to four times the cost if it's not provided for now. It's a good investment in our future.'

Davis said city and community officials campaigned for the Highway 100 extension project for more than a decade with the idea that the highway would improve safety and relieve congestion on Interstate 380 and on some arterial city streets. Local officials, though, always saw the highway as an investment that would boost economic development and growth in the city to the west, he said.

The two proposed ramps would not have been necessary under the DOT's initial design plan for the highway. However, the DOT removed the connections when it decided against including loop ramps like ones at Interstate 380 and Interstate 80, where semi-trailer trucks have on occasion have tipped over. Davis said.

Once the 80th Street connection fell out of the project, Pomeranz said the city officials from Cedar Rapids and Fairfax south of Cedar Rapids both met at DOT headquarters in Ames to discuss restoring ramp connections.

None of the money for the project will come from the city's Paving for Progress program, which is using revenue from the local-option sales tax to fix city streets.

l Comments: (319) 398-8312; rick.smith@thegazette.com