Iowa Department of Transportation crews are trying to work around Mother Nature when it comes to improvements to area roads. One of their projects is on Atlantic, is Highway 71, south of the intersection with Highway 6. Scott Suhr is the Transportation Planner for the DOT’s District 4 office, in Atlantic. He says if the weather cooperates, they hope to complete the curb and gutter sections soon. Afterward, asphalt will be applied to the road surface. The next project will be to resurface areas where cold-in-place recycling was done, from U-S 6 north, to the Audubon County line. The goal, he says, is to try and complete the project before the end of Fall. If that isn’t possible, their intermittent goal is to get a binder lift, or what’s applied before the surface lift. Suhr says the work is needed because storm water runoff is having trouble getting to the gutters and into the storm sewer intakes.

Residents of and visitors to Atlantic who dealt with road construction on Highway 6/E. 7^th Street in 2015, will have a little bit of déjà vue where that stretch of road is concerned. Suhr says they will start where they left off two-years ago, near Burger King, with milling and resurfacing of the road that wasn’t finished the last time around. He said the two outside lanes will likely be closed while the milling is underway. Once that’s done, traffic will shift to those lanes and work conducted on the inside lanes.

In other words, the entire street won’t be blocked off and traffic detoured, like it was in 2015. That project was a “full deck replacement.” The current project has been in the DOT’s plans for a couple of years, and was waiting for funding to come through, which it has. The curbs and gutters along that stretch of road are in good shape, according to Suhr, so they will remain untouched.

He says it’s something that needs to be done, and will improve safety. Other area projects include a micro-surfacing of Interstate 80 that’s currently underway from the Cass County line east to Dexter. That will require slight lane shifts from time-to-time. Suhr reminds motorists to slow down in work zones, obey the posted speed limits, and avoid distractions.