SIOUX CITY | While the first seven years of the Interstate 29 widening and reconstruction project focused mainly on expanding the highway to the north and south of Sioux City, it was hard to visualize the changes in store for the downtown area.
Now that construction is taking place exclusively through downtown, the Iowa Department of Transportation's plans for exits, entrances and how they tie in to realigned city streets are beginning to come into focus.
"It's fun to watch. They're doing something different every day. It's pretty interesting seeing everything take shape," said Mark Shook, co-owner of House of Kitchens at 308 S. Floyd Blvd.
For much of last summer, Shook's business was hard to access while the street past the business was torn up and rebuilt. With the Floyd Boulevard realignment finished, Shook and his customers now are adjusting to new traffic patterns.
People are also reading…
That realignment is one of the completed pieces helping motorists see how the I-29 reconstruction puzzle fits together.
The 2016 construction work on I-29 was one of addition and subtraction: new bridges and sections of road appearing, old bridges and sections of road disappearing. Most recently, on Jan. 14, the northbound I-29 bridge at Hamilton Boulevard was demolished. Construction of the new bridge is expected to begin yet this winter.
With four bridges through downtown under construction, Sioux Cityans are getting an appreciation for how much higher the new I-29 alignment will be.
"One of the things I hear most is, 'I didn't think things were going up that much,'" said Dakin Schultz, IDOT District 3 traffic planner.
Work began on four downtown bridges last spring, the eighth year of work on the $400 million project to widen I-29 to three lanes in each direction from Sergeant Bluff, through Sioux City, to the South Dakota border.
Construction of the bridges over Floyd and Hamilton boulevards and over Virginia and Pierce streets will continue through the winter, Schultz said.
"Bridge construction, except for deck pours, they can do a lot of that over the winter," he said.
The bridges are part of the current two-year phase in which the northbound lanes and bridges through downtown will be rebuilt. The southbound lanes and bridges will be rebuilt the following two years.
Observers should have noted the many developments during the first year of reconstruction of those northbound lanes: the completion of the bridge over the Floyd River and paving of new lanes south of that bridge, the near-completion of the bridge over Bacon Creek and the reopening of the exit ramp onto Floyd Boulevard.
Also completed in this phase was the permanent closure of the exit ramp from southbound I-29 onto Nebraska Street, an interchange that is being eliminated under the new configuration.
The entrance ramp from Wesley Parkway onto northbound I-29 has been reopened.
Half of the northbound bridge over Hamilton Boulevard is completed and open to traffic and construction of the other half of the new bridge will begin yet this winter.
A wet spring and summer hampered construction at times, Schultz said, but a warm, dry fall helped construction crews catch up and keep the project on schedule.
Schultz said major construction of the I-29 project should be done in 2019, with some finishing work wrapping up in 2020.
