‘Helping people travel safely from Point A to Point B’; Iowa DOT official receives national honor

DES MOINES — Stuart Anderson has only ever worked for the Iowa Department of Transportation — more than 30 years and counting. He started working for Iowa DOT part-time while finishing his engineering degree at Iowa State University.

Anderson’s work was recognized recently by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. He received the national group’s President’s Transportation Award, which is given annually to individuals and agencies that have provided exemplary service, furthering the transportation activities of member departments to make their communities better, according to Iowa DOT.

Anderson, the director of the Transportation Development Division and the agency’s liaison to the Iowa Transportation Commission, talked to The Gazette about the national honor, his career, and some of the big challenges and projects on Iowa’s roadways.

The following interview has been edited only for clarity and brevity.

Q: How did it feel to receive this honor?

A: It’s a great, great honor of course. This is an award where state DOTs can nominate employees to this national organization of state DOTs called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. So first of all, it’s very rewarding to have been nominated by my peers here at the Iowa DOT and especially rewarding, of course, to be one of the final awardees recognized by this national association of our state DOTs.

Q: Three decades is a long time in any position. What has kept you coming back to and staying with Iowa DOT all these years?

A: The thing that is most valuable is seeing the work that Iowa DOT has done with Iowa’s transportation system and knowing I’ve played a role in that. One of my favorite aspects of working at the DOT is driving around the state of Iowa and seeing projects all across the state for all modes of transportation, and knowing that I’ve had a role in some of those, and that the DOT plays such a vital role in helping people travel safely from Point A to Point B, and access education, recreation, health care, all those other important services that transportation provides.

Q: With an award like this, it is natural to maybe get a little introspective. Is there anything over the course of your career, whether it’s a project, initiative, or something else, that you’re especially proud of?

A: That’s a great question. There’s probably quite a few things I would point out. Most of my career has been a little bit more focused on the transportation planning side. So that means getting involved with projects just when they’re very conceptual and we’re trying to identify funding opportunities and really a lot of prep work, doing environmental reviews, and getting them ready before they’re actually able to be put into a five-year program and then be constructed. So that means throughout a lot of my career, I’ve been working on projects that took decades to get to final completion. There’s a couple great examples of that. Probably the one that comes to mind most is the Interstate 74 Mississippi River Bridge replacement in the Quad Cities. That was a project that a lot of work went into to get it ready for programming and ultimately construction. So that was extremely rewarding to be there at the ribbon cutting when that bridge finally opened to traffic. Another example of a project that I was really excited to be part of is, of course, all the work on Interstate 380, but then especially the work that was done by the department to support the creation of the commuter bus service, the 380 Express bus service, to help provide that means of travel, to help alleviate some of the traffic on Interstate 380 so that we can mitigate some of those construction impacts. And that’s really been a model multimodal operational solution to highway construction impacts.

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Q: As your work continues, looking forward what do you see as some of the biggest challenges or opportunities facing you and your work at Iowa DOT?

A: One of the focuses over the last 10 to 20 years at the department and of the Iowa Transportation Commission, who we work very closely with as they develop the long-range plan and the five-year program, is really focusing on stewardship of the system. That’s making investments on our existing roads and bridges in Iowa (and) enhancing safety on the state highway system and the multimodal transportation system. There’s been a shift over that 10 to 20 years to really try to focus on improving our bridge conditions and our pavement conditions, and tremendous work has been accomplished in that area on the state highway system, and that continues to be a focus. We certainly have a lot of needs, not only on the state system but the county and city system. So we’re always working to try to identify ways to be more efficient with the funds we do get so we can maximize those funds that are spent on road and bridge improvements. And that’s been one of the joys of my career, has been the partnerships with local jurisdictions and planning agencies to really make sure we’re making the best use of the funds we do have, and make them go as far as we can. That’s going to really be a continuing focus in the future.

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Q: Whenever we talk to the DOT, we must talk about road projects. What are the next big Iowa road projects on the DOT’s agenda?

A: Talking about the interstate initially, Interstate 380 work is ongoing. It seems like it’s been underway for quite a while. We’re really excited to see the Interstate 80-Interstate 380 systems interchange be completed a couple years ago, and then we jumped right into working on Interstate 380 going to the north from that system’s interchange, and then also starting work at the Wright Brothers Boulevard interchange and going south. So we now have that middle section of Interstate 380 (and) we’re working on developing that project. It is in the commission’s five-year program. That work will begin on that here in the next few years. So really excited to see that entire Iowa City to Cedar Rapids corridor be modernized and improved. Similarly, work is underway on the Interstate 35 corridor from the Ankeny area, just north of Des Moines, up to Ames. Work is underway on that corridor, and there’s still one more section of improvement in that corridor that the commission will be considering the ability to program work on that here with the next five-year program. And as I mentioned before, we just have a tremendous amount of stewardship work happening all across the state of Iowa. We have some major bridge projects — of course, the Lansing Bridge is underway right now across the Mississippi River on Iowa 9. We have the Interstate 80 Bridge replacement in the Quad Cities coming up here in the next couple of years. So a lot of work happening across all of our roads and bridges.

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Q: This year, Iowa is on pace to its fewest traffic deaths in decades. Do we know yet why that number is down so much this year?

A: There’s a lot of factors that go into safety on the highway system. There are engineering improvements that we can control with the commission’s programming of safety improvements. And certainly they have made a lot of really systemic improvements on the state highway system, looking at cable median barrier rail, wider pavement markings so they’re more visible across adverse weather conditions, more paved shoulders, a lot more rumble strips, both on the edge of the shoulder, but also more recently we’ve been really aggressively putting center line rumble strips so that people have that warning when they’re getting out of their travel lane. So a lot of engineering work has been done. Enforcement is a key factor and the (Iowa) State Patrol has been doing a lot of work in that area. The distracted driving legislation this past session is part of that toolbox as well. To have that hands-free law in place has been important. So I think it’s a multitude of factors. But certainly the numbers have seen significant improvement this calendar year.

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