Meeting Tuesday will show latest Floyd overpass plans

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The next step in the project to build an elevated Floyd interchange on the Avenue of the Saints will take place next week when the Iowa Department of Transportation holds a public meeting to show the latest plans.

The information meeting will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 16, at the Floyd Community Center, 706 Fairfield Ave.

The meeting will be conducted using an open forum format, and Iowa DOT staff will be present to informally discuss the proposed project, according to an announcement from the DOT.

Pete Hjelmstad, District 2 field services coordinator with the Iowa DOT, told the Press that he hopes for a good turnout.

“We encourage everybody to come on out and take a look. We want everybody’s input so we can move ahead with the project,” he said.
Hjelmstad said the overpass plans haven’t changed much from those that were first shown in 2016.

“We have what we called the preferred alternative,” he said. “Several meetings ago we came out with different designs of the interchange, different types of interchanges and through that process we got to where we are now with the preferred alternative.”

The design shows entrance and exit ramps to eastbound Highway 18/27 connecting to county road T44/Quarry Road south of the highway in straight lines.

The entrance and exit from the westbound lane of the Avenue are a little more complicated because of the location of the 218 Fuel Express truck stop on the north corner of the intersection. Because of that, the westbound entrance and exit both curl around from the east to connect with Highway 218/Monroe Street.

“There’s not really any major changes,” Hjelmstad said about the overpass plan. “More or less it’s more refined, a little more detail. People will have a little more idea of what the right-of-way impacts will be. Things have been narrowed down a little bit more.”

Hjelmstad said the state will need to purchase more land for right of way for the project, but he wasn’t sure about the total amount of additional land required.

The latest plans for the project, as well as a computer model video “fly-through” of the project are available now at the Iowa DOT’s public involvement website, www.news.iowadot.gov/pim/. Go to that site and click on the “U.S. 18/U.S. 218/Iowa 27 Intersection Floyd County” link.

Hjelmstad said construction is expected to begin in the fall of 2021, or after July 1 when the new fiscal year funding will become available. He said the project is on the state’s program schedule, so funding availability should not be an issue.

The plan is to continue to allow traffic through the area without detours by working on the eastbound and westbound lanes separately. There will be a detour needed for county road T44/Quarry Road for part of the construction, he said.

All the intersections with the Avenue of the Saints in or near Floyd are currently at grade level.

Even though there are turning lanes on and off the Avenue of the Saints at the main intersection near the two truck stops, the intersection has been the site of dozens of accidents including fatalities over the years as vehicles pull out in front of or into cross traffic.

Residents of Floyd and Floyd County have advocated for an overpass interchange on the Avenue of the Saints for years.

The death at the main intersection of 23-year-old college student and Charles City resident T.J. Houdek in July 2016 in a motorcycle versus semi accident, resulted in a petition drive asking the state for an overpass.

The Iowa DOT began holding public meetings in the fall of 2016 with potential plans for an elevated interchange at the main U.S. 18 and U.S. 218 intersection by the truck stops. All other at-grade intersections with the Avenue of the Saints in Floyd will be closed.

The project is listed in the current Iowa DOT five-year program, which was approved last month, at a cost of $20.69 million, with major construction being completed in 2022.

The project breaks down as follows:

• July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 — $1 million for right of way purchases and $50,000 for mitigation.
• July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022 — $2.834 million for a new bridge; $16.180 million for grading and paving; $64,000 for lighting and $125,000 for traffic signs.
• July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 — $436,000 for erosion control.

Foth Companies, a Wisconsin consulting and design firm with offices in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids among other places, is doing the current design work for the project.