Letter to the Editor: Why the delay on Highway 14 work?

By Eugene Meier, Rockford

I am at a loss as to whom this letter should be directed to.

It seems to me that the business people of Charles City would be a little concerned that their town, which is connected to the west by Highway 14, and would be asking serious questions of the Iowa Department of Transportation as to why the holdup in completing the project of a large culvert under the roadway, and the laying of new concrete.

With all the traffic rerouted for weeks, doesn’t this cause problems for manufacturers along the detoured route?

With a lot of traffic on South Main, it seems like a beehive of activity most times.

When RAGBRAI had to be rerouted that should have raised some questions as to everyone’s safety, of manufacturer’s workers, truck traffic along with a steady flow of cyclists well into the nighttime hours.

I would think the merchants and shopkeepers would be getting a little impatient with the long delay of completion of a project that should have only taken a week, maybe two.

Checking on its progress makes me realize, maybe we don’t have the right crew or overseer to crack the whip, so to speak. With the large earthmovers it shouldn’t take this long.

This was started 2 weeks before RAGBRAI and that is long gone and over with, 3 weeks ago.

Sometimes farmers could move more dirt over a shorter time period than the state people.

Have the environmentalists gotten involved with a salamander or a rare turtle, or a nest of bumblebees to stop the progress?

Let’s hope that Al Gore hasn’t gotten involved with his cronies or we may never have a completion of a western link to Charles City by way of Highway 14.