The State Transportation Commission has approved the five-year transportation improvement plan. DOT systems planner Stuart Anderson says the plan is updated every year, and last year was a difficult one due to inflation.
“So that meant all of our project cost estimates for projects in our program grew significantly and while those project cost estimates grew significantly our revenue did not grow as significantly,” he says. That meant they had to delay 12 projects in the plan last year.
Anderson says the outlook was much different as they updated the plan this year. “Construction cost inflation has moderated significantly,” Anderson says, “so the commission did not have to deal with real large increases in our project cost estimates. And we did see some growth in our revenue, both at the state level and we see some annual growth in our federal revenue as a result of the infrastructure bill.”
There is approximately $4.5 billion of state and federal funding forecast to be available over the next five years for road and bridge improvements in the plan. Anderson says bridges and interchanges are a big part of the plan. “There is a lot of investment in bridges and the Commission has increased the amount of investment in bridges each year just to continue our trend and improving those overall conditions. The Commission also particularly in our metro areas, makes a lot of investments in improving our interchanges and making those more more modern designs,” Anderson says.
The program includes I-80 Middle Road Interchange reconstruction in Bettendorf, I-80 Mississippi River bridge replacement, I-35/80/235 Southwest Mixmaster modernization in Polk County, I-35 bridge replacement and widening at the U-S 30 interchange in Ames, I-35 widening between Ankeny and Iowa 210, I-29 interchange construction in Woodbury County, and adding more than 50 truck parking spots.
You can find the complete five-year plan on the DOT’s website.