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Milford City Council Tables Decision On Hwy 71 Conversion

March 25, 2025 Steve Schwaller

(Milford)– With one council member and the Mayor absent, the Milford City Council Monday evening tabled action on a resolution that would convert Highway 71 through the city from four lanes to three. The council will take the matter up once again April 14th.

The council heard the findings of public input gathered at a recent informational session and an online survey. The information was presented to the council by Jennifer McCoy of the Bolten and Menk Engineering firm. The council wanted to hear the public’s input after a study on the matter was done by the Iowa Department of Transportation. McCoy says about 70 percent of respondents want no changes made to the highway while 30 percent were in favor of a three lane conversion. She says not all of those who responded are residents of Milford or own a business along the highway…

“Those in favor of going to the conversion, a lot of it was related to speeding, a lot of comments about parking downtown being difficult to exit a parked vehicle, narrow travel lanes, challenging to cross and also hard to see if you were making a left a turn from U.S. 71 and on to a side street. Those that wanted to keep it, a lot of them talked about, you know, it’s fine as is, it’s been that way for a long time. They were concerned about traffic back ups, especially in the summer.”

While the council tabled any action on a resolution calling for a three-lane conversion, a couple did express some possible interest in making a temporary change on a trial basis. McCoy says that would need to be done in conjunction with approval from the Iowa Department of Transportation…

“Something like that would mean re-striping the road temporarily and ideally that would be in place a minimum of nine months to a year so that way you can capture just how traffic moves throughout an entire year including the summer season.”

Highway 71 through Milford is scheduled to be re-surfaced in 2030. Council members indicated the pilot could be done in advance of that, at which point the permanent change could be made with the re-paving, if that’s the council’s final decision.

It was also pointed that regardless the decision that’s made, the city will need to replace stoplights at a cost of about $350,000 per intersection. City officials say the existing signals are obsolete.

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