Four-lane Highway 60 nearly complete - New road offers connection from Le Mars to Minnesota

Late last October, the Iowa 60 Sibley bypass was opened to traffic, and earlier in the year the Le Mars bypass was completed, clearing the way for a straight, true shot into Minnesota, according to Iowa Department of Transportation officials.

The Sibley bypass is open and nearly complete, said Dakin Schultz, transportation planner with the Iowa DOT District 3 office in Sioux City.

"We've got the Second Avenue interchange to complete, a couple county roads on the southeast end, I think they're A30 and L40 at Sibley. We've got that to wrap up this spring," Schultz said. "Then we'll have erosion control at Le Mars, what we call permit erosion control. And we'll probably have some of that up in SIbley as well to complete."

As for that final Iowa segment, about 1.4 miles to the Minnesota border, that is being handled by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Schultz said the Minnesota DOT is probably 80 to 85 percent done with the grading from 120th Street in Osceola County north past Bigelow, Minnesota.

Minnesota got that job because while the Iowa DOT was moving north on its Iowa 60 track and the Minnesota DOT was heading south, the Minnesota folks were initially uncertain whether they would go through or around Bigelow, Schultz said.

"Instead of giving everyone something to laugh at if we came up and they went around, we coordinated the effort with them," he said, "and we went back to the first roadway in Iowa and incorporated that into their project. We're paying for it. We agreed to pay their administrative costs and design costs for our project, and we pay the actual costs on the construction. We worked with them on the other things. So it worked out nice."

The Minnesota DOT will have some erosion control work to complete, but the last section of Iowa 60 will be paved this year.

"It will certainly be open to traffic, complete to us," he said.

The cost of the Iowa 60 expansion is right at $225 million, Schultz said.

The planning work for the project began back in the early to mid 1990s, and the ribbon cutting that launched the construction occurred in May of 2002, he said.

"We think it's been a very successful project. It's certainly been a nice one to complete for us - a big corridor," he said. A lot of positive things to come out of it. I think the communities along the route have really benefited from it. We certainly get a lot ot compliments about it. It's a point of pride in our office."

The people of Le Mars were "thrilled" when the south interchange opened, said Neal Adler, executive director of the Le Mars Chamber of Commerce. He noted the daily exchange of traffic involving workers from Le Mars and Sioux City on what has become a major route.

"Certainly, it's nice to have all three entrances now open to Le Mars," he said.

The folks at Sibley are generally pleased with the new expressway, and many prefer "expressway" to the more negative-sounding "bypass," said Shandry Dake, executive director of the Sibley Chamber of Commerce.

"Expressway gives the impression that it's a growing society and we're growing with it. And a bypass means everybody's bypassing us, and we're just going to be a little town left behind or whatever," she said. "So it just kind of depends on how you look at it."

She sees it as an opportunity for growth in the community.

"We have some businesses that are working on moving out there, like our co-op and our Subway," she noted.

The new Iowa 60, however, proved a hardship to three of Sibley's four gas stations that are located along old Highway 60, Dake said. "But they still get their in-town business. If people do need gas, they more or less have to come down to the old part of town," she said.

And the people who drive on the new highway regularly are impressed, Dake noted

"Everybody always says, 'Oh, it's faster to get everywhere now.' It just seems like it cuts the time off," she said.