Despite weather, Highway 30 widening made strides in 2010

Highway 30 got wider and faster between Ames and Tama this year, giving hope to supporters who dream of a four-lane Highway 30 spanning Iowa.

About 75 percent of the 8.1 mile four-lane Tama-Toledo Bypass was completed, the first stretch of which opened last month. Hopes for completion this year were stifled by an extremely wet summer, but the remaining portion should be completed next spring.

“They got behind - of course weather is the main reason - and the bridge that would be on the north side of our city limits where we would come off couldn't be completed because the ground was not stable,” Toledo Mayor Pamela Wood said.

A project to widen Highway 30 to four lanes between State Center and Colo opened last week, Iowa Department of Transportation District Construction Engineer Wes Musgrove said. Another four-lane widening project from State Center to Highway 300 could not be completed due primarily to weather. It is slated for completion next summer.

“It will be all four lane from Ames to the east side of Tama-Toledo next summer,” Musgrove said.

Highway 30 proponents see such projects as a boon to safety and economic development. They see a fully four-laned Highway 30 eventually easing the burden of I-80 carrying east-west traffic across the state.

The Tama-Toledo Bypass was a huge step forward for the highway, according to Edith Reiss Pfeffer of Clinton, president of the U.S. Highway 30 Coalition of Iowa. She hopes for a similar bypass of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon area, although no funding currently exists for that costly project.

“There were lots and lots of accidents at their stop light,” Peffer said of the Highway 30-Highway 63 intersection in Toledo.

The next big step forward for Highway 30 could come in Linn County. The DOT's five-year plans calls for buying right of way to widen 13.9 miles of Highway 30 from Highway 218 to Highway 21 in 2014 and 2015 at a cost of $12.4 million.

DOT District 6 Planner Cathy Cutler said land will be acquired for interchanges at Highway 218 and Highway 21. She said construction of the interchanges could be built at the same time as the highway widening, or delayed until a time when they are more needed.

Construction of the four-laning project in Linn County will not be funded until the next five-year plan, Cutler said. The project will upgrade even the existing leg of the highway to modern standards.

Wood said the bypass is welcomed by Toledo, even though it will take away traffic from many existing businesses.

“We all have to understand that it's going to take all of us to keep our chins up for a little while,” Wood said. Motorists driving on the route that roughly tracks the border of Tama and Toledo will see a new $5 million Toledo wastewater treatment plant and future $1 million Toledo public works building.

Wood hopes that such signs of progress will help motorists realize Tama is a vibrant community where they might want to settle down, even if they have to use the newly four-laned road to commute to work elsewhere.

A committee of citizens worked on plans to develop signs to tell motorists about Toledo, Wood said, but when the bypass finally opened they realized the plans wouldn't work well, and returned to the drawing board.