(Spencer)– The Iowa Department of Transportation is out with its five-year road plan that takes the state into the year 2010.
The DOT Commission released the report during a public input meeting earlier this week in Council Bluffs.
The two billion dollar proposal includes more work on Interstate 235 in Des Moines, widening Interstate 80 in Johnson county, and reconstructing Interstates 80, 29 and 480 in Council Bluffs.
The plan does NOT include money for the Spencer bypass project.
Spencer City Manager Dean Torreson and a group of local officials traveled to the meeting to talk with the commission about putting the bypass project back in the five-year plan. Torreson says they got the bad news right away when they walked into the room.
Torreson says even though the bypass was not included in the plan, the commission did give some hope for some funding a few years down the road.
Total cost of the bypass project has been put at roughly 35 million dollars.
The project was initially included in the DOT’s last five-year plan, but was taken out in 2002 due to state financial problems. Torreson says they aren’t giving up. He says they’ll get it built one way or the other.
The DOT’s plan DOES include funding for the completion of a four-lane corridor on Highway 60 here in northwest Iowa linking Sioux City to the Minnesota border.
(Story from Danielle Hitchings of sister station KDWD Hot 100 in Spencer.).
