Construction season requires coordination for East Iowa planners

From spring through fall in any given year, the Iowa Department of Transportation has up to 500 work zones on roadways.

Add short-term work like routine maintenance, plus city and county projects, and there are thousands of work zones statewide between March and November, said Cathy Cutler, transportation planner for the Iowa Department of Transportation district based out of Cedar Rapids.

With so much road construction occurring, a major part of the planning process involves coordinating the work in a way that allows traffic to run as smoothly as possible by not overloading one area with construction or detouring drivers into another project.

Engineers and transportation planners talk regularly about projects across jurisdictions. The DOT also meets quarterly with local planning groups called metropolitan planning organizations, which are made up of city and county officials.

“It does take a lot of coordination,” Cutler said.

It's an aspect of projects that likely isn't appreciated by drivers who are more focused on the inconvenience brought by road work, transportation planners said.

“I do kind of think about it,” said Stephanie Kathmann, 36, of Cedar Rapids, “but I think in general, people just kind of see it (construction) as an annoyance.”

She travels to Iowa City twice a week for school, taking her through what may be the most visible and disruptive road project in the area right now: the closure of loops on the Interstate 80-Interstate 380 interchange in Johnson County for bridge work until mid-July.

There are a couple of detours depending on which way a driver is going that require driving in the opposite direction for a couple of miles before turning around to get back on track.

Cutler said the DOT likes to detour traffic onto its own system because city and county roads are not built to the same standards and may not be able to handle increased traffic. When it does use local roads, it typically enters into agreements with the local government and pays for any damage.

The DOT had considered rerouting traffic through North Liberty, but the town's Highway 965 already experiences rush-hour congestion.

The project includes temporary traffic signals at the Tiffin exit, where some of the traffic is detoured. There were some coordination issues and a malfunction, so local law enforcement has helped out, Cutler said.

That's a relatively minor issue, but transportation officials say that no matter how good the planning is, delays often cannot be avoided with projects. Bad weather, funding issues or some unforeseen snag are common culprits.

“We do often get more reactive than proactive,” said John Yapp, executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County, which plays a central role in transportation planning countywide.

For example, Iowa City anticipated starting a $5.6 million reconstruction of Lower Muscatine Road this spring. It also wants to reconstruct Sycamore Street and build an overpass at the First Avenue railroad crossing, but all three are in the same area, so a staggered schedule was created to limit the negative effects on drivers and the neighborhood.

Then the Lower Muscatine bids came in nearly $2 million higher than estimated, causing the City Council to not award a contract. The other projects were not ready to go, Yapp said, and now the city is trying to reschedule them so it can do the Sycamore Street work later this year.

You're also at the mercy of contractors' schedules, said Dan Whitlow, Marion's city engineer. Contractors are often given a certain period of time to complete a project, but the more work days allowed in the contract, the less they'll charge because they won't need to worry about higher costs from things like paying overtime.

Coordinating projects regionally is difficult because contractors often have leeway on the time frame to get the work done, Whitlow said.

Linn County Engineer Steve Gannon and Greg Parker, his counterpart in Johnson County, echoed that point. Linn County may award a contract in February but give the contractor until November to finish a project, which may be month's work, because it saves money, Gannon said.

Gannon used a current Johnson County project near the Linn County line as an example of coordination.

Johnson County is reconstructing 120th Street in Shueyville in a joint project with the city, and it gave Linn County a heads up about the project a couple of years ago, Gannon said. Johnson County suggested a detour that involved a couple of Linn County's rock-surfaced roads. Linn County officials, worried about increased traffic stirring up too much dust, said those roads were not suitable for a detour and suggested a couple of paved roads, which are being used.

Of course, that doesn't stop people, especially those familiar with the area, from finding a route they believe is faster and disregarding the detour.

Parker said government officials understand road work is an inconvenience for the public.

“All construction projects, they're like World War III,” he said. “But when they're done, they're great.”