DOT considers bumping up interchange project after weekend crashes on Highway 30

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Iowa Department of Transportation said Monday that it may speed up efforts to make a stretch of Highway 30 safer after two serious crashes less than 48 hours apart. Friday afternoon four people died in a crash involving a semi and a car at the intersection of Highway 21 and Highway 30. Two passengers were from Texas and two were from Missouri. The semi driver wasn't seriously hurt.

On Saturday night, another crash around 11 p.m. shut down part of Highway 30 near Highway 21. So far, the Iowa State Patrol hasn't released information on any injuries or details on what happened.

Cathy Cutler with the DOT's sixth district said until this weekend, that intersection had been a fairly safe one, with no fatal crashes recorded there from 2004 to 2014.

'There has been some discussions just starting at this point, whether we could advance the [Highway] 21 interchange as part of the Tama County four-laning,” Cutler explained.

That would mean turning Highway 21 into an overpass at Highway 30 a few years earlier than originally planned. The DOT currently wants to start buying land for the project in 2020, but including it as part of the four-lane expansion of 30 through Tama County - instead of neighboring Benton County - would move it up to its planned work for fiscal year 2017. 'It could begin as early as July 1st, 2016.”

Cutler said the site of the weekend crashes is fairly flat, with good visibility in both directions. But it also has a high volume of semi traffic.

'We have no indication that speed was any kind of a factor in this crash, but certainly, it takes semis a lot longer to come to a stop,” Cutler told us.

Sgt. Darin Snedden with the Iowa State Patrol does regular patrols of Highway 30, which has a wide variety of places where traffic can enter - or exit - the roadway.

'Gravel roads, county roads, so there's many intersections,” Snedden said. He often sees people misjudge the speed of oncoming traffic as they turn onto the road or drive across it. 'People either make a mistake and don't think the vehicle approaching is going as fast as it is, or they just do a quick look or a ‘California roll.'”

He hopes the addition of more lanes and interchanges will mean fewer collisions, but he said with more lanes comes a higher speed limit, something motorists will need to keep in mind.

'People do need to give themselves a longer following distance, longer braking distance, and be prepared for the higher speeds,” Snedden explained.