GALVA - A new four-lane section of U.S. Highway 20 between Moorland and Rockwell City will be finished by the fall of 2010, according to a schedule outlined by a state highway engineer Friday.
Tony Lazarowicz, a district engineer for the Iowa Department of Transportation, also said that earthmoving needed to widen the highway west of Rockwell City will begin this summer.
Lazarowicz explained the upcoming agenda of highway work to members of the U.S. 20 Corridor Association Friday morning at the Galva-Holstein Middle School.
He said a contract for paving four lanes of new highway between Moorland in Webster County and Iowa Highway 4 on the west side of Rockwell City is expected to be awarded in June. That work is expected to be done by the fall of 2010.
Lazarowicz said all four lanes will be paved. State transportation officials originally said just two lanes would be paved, but a five-year plan for highway improvements OK'd by the Iowa Transportation Commission in June 2008 includes money for paving four.
Earthmoving to extend the four-lane route for seven miles west of Iowa Highway 4 will be done under a contract expected to be awarded in May. That work would also be completed by the fall of 2010, according to the engineer.
Cost estimates for the four-lane paving and earthmoving weren't immediately available. The state's five-year plan for highway improvements calls for spending $117.7 million on the route in Webster, Calhoun and Sac counties by 2013.
As they work to widen U.S. Highway 20, state engineers continue to upgrade the existing part of the route. The latest step in that effort will start next year when a section in Sac and Ida counties will be resurfaced with concrete. Lazarowicz said that work will be done between Iowa Highway 110 in Sac County and U.S. Highway 59 in Ida County.
The work is being planned at a time when the state faces an estimated $267 million annual shortfall in needed highway money caused by a combination of sagging revenues and fast-rising construction costs.
''Certainly people will see the impact because it delays or prolongs the work that needs to be done,'' Dena Gray-Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Transportation, said Friday afternoon. ''People will see noticeable changes in the quality of the road system.''
At this point there is no list of projects to be canceled or delayed because of the money situation, Gray-Fisher said. She said changes could be made in the spring when the next five-year plan for transportation improvements is prepared.
President-elect Barack Obama is planning an economic stimulus bill that is expected to include billions of dollars for infrastructure projects. But how that will impact Iowa isn't known.
''No one knows what this stimulus bill will look like, but we're doing what we have to do to be prepared,'' Lazarowicz said.
He said the early indications are that stimulus bill money will only be for projects that can be started very quickly. State officials are now preparing a list of those projects.
Contact Bill Shea at (515) 573-2141 or bshea@messengernews.net
