HOLSTEIN - Drivers on U.S. Highway 20 west of Fort Dodge haven't seen the last of the big earthmovers that are clearing the way for a new four-lane version of that route.

The state's proposed five-year plan for highway improvements calls for a lot more of that work.

''You will start to see a lot of progress next year,'' Dakin Schultz, a planner for the Iowa Department of Transportation, said Friday. ''You'll see a lot of paving down.''

Schultz talked to the U.S. 20 Corridor Association about the planned work Friday at the Lohff-Schumann Memorial Community Center in Holstein.

He said the earthmoving between Moorland in Webster County and Iowa Highway 4 in Calhoun County is 80 percent to 90 percent done.

The bridge near Moorland Pond will be completed this fall, he added.

A contract for paving the four lanes between Moorland and Iowa Highway 4 will be awarded next month. The estimated cost of that work is $14.7 million.

Schultz said there's ''an outside chance'' some of that paving will be done by the end of this year. That new section is scheduled to open by the end of 2010.

Next week, the Department of Transportation will award an earthmoving contract that will advance the new route even farther west. That contract is for the stretch between Iowa Highway 4 near Rockwell City and Sac County Road N14.

The proposed five-year plan also includes this major U.S. Highway 20 work:

Paving four lanes between Iowa Highway 4 and the border of Calhoun and Sac counties in 2011-2012

Earthmoving between U.S. Highway 71 and Sac County Road N14 in 2010-2011

Paving between U.S. Highway 71 and Sac County Road N14 in 2011-2012

''If there's any question as to the Department of Transportation's commitment to Highway 20, this should answer it,'' said Steve Hoesel, the association's secretary.

The Iowa Transportation Commission will consider the proposed five-year plan when it meets June 9.

Schultz said the department has one surveying crew that will do nothing but U.S. Highway 20 work for the next year and a half.

U.S. Highway 20 crosses northern Iowa between Dubuque and Sioux City. It is being expanded to four lanes in a project that has dragged on for nearly 40 years. Today about 90 miles between Moorland and Moville in Woodbury County are all that remain to be widened. All 90 of those miles are now either under construction or the subject of design work and surveying.

''Every piece of it is now in play,'' state Rep. Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, said during the group's meeting. ''It's all a matter of time now.''

Contact Bill Shea at (515) 573-2141 or bshea@messengernews.net