I love maps. I love to look at them whether online or an atlas. I love planning a trip. I keep an atlas at home solely for the purpose of highlighting the route I took on a motorcycle trip when I get back.
DOT Seeks Input on Rest Areas
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
Since there is so much map chatter on here. Every Iowa DOT map that has been released. Happy hunting for those rest areas!
https://iowadot.gov/maps/digital-maps/other-maps/historical-iowa-transportation-maps
https://iowadot.gov/maps/digital-maps/other-maps/historical-iowa-transportation-maps
How does it cost $700,000 to close a glorified **** house?
Cost Savings
The typical cost to close a full service rest area has been estimated at approximately $700,000 each while the cost to replace an aging rest area is approximately $3,500,000. Closure of a parking only site is estimated to cost approximately $385,000.
Cost Savings
The typical cost to close a full service rest area has been estimated at approximately $700,000 each while the cost to replace an aging rest area is approximately $3,500,000. Closure of a parking only site is estimated to cost approximately $385,000.
That's so cool!
I enjoyed looking at the development of the interstates in the 50's & 60's . . . for example, by the 1966 map, I-35 went north from DSM as far as Ames and then stopped.
I could look at those all day... and just check out the progression of a certain area. The city insets I find probably the most fascinating.
Look at the I35 alignment in northern Iowa pre 1965 (I think). Mason City lobbied to pull the alignment closer to them and it was changed. It was originally supposed to come straight up, near Garner instead and continue to the west side of Albert Lea, MN. That angle was the last section to be completed in the late 70s due to farmer opposition for cutting their fields and at an odd angle.
Because contractors know the government will over pay for something so they over bid it.
It's not going to just sit there with a barricade at the entrance. There would be significant demolition, haul away, and utility costs. Costs to remove signs along the highway. Assume some advertising costs to announce the closure, costs to update databases and maps, other misc administrative costs related to the sale of the property. Etc. Never as clean and simple as you think.
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If I remember right Indiana and Kansas do it that way, also a few in Minnesota.
Like that cluster of a fly over they are building at 35-30? That's millions being pissed away not even counting all the errors they've made.
Anyone who thinks that exit being redone is a waste of money is a moron.
The errors almost certainly won't cost the taxpayers a dime.
Tore one of the towers clear down and rebuilt it. Currently leveling the towers basically by hand because they don't match to put the beams in at the right angles.
If the DOT changed the design specs during construction, it may add additional expense. The errors you are referring too, sound like constuction issues that come out of the contractor's profit.
In my world the DOT projects are easily bid at 30% more than private jobs for the same work. And the paper work maaaaaybe adds 5% of that.
We have a GPS too. Sometimes it gives us totally whack routes no matter what preferences we put in. It decided to send us on some blacktop one way excursion in Hannibal, MO to avoid one short traffic light on highway.So we use everything, paper maps, Google maps on phone, GPS.
Another epic GPS fail was with kids on baseball team and it sent us to some abomination called Pizza Wheel instead of Pizza Ranch.
Wait, it was an abomination compared to Pizza Ranch?
It makes sense in Kansas, because you're on a toll road. Instead of having to build exits with booths, and on-ramps with booths, it's easier to do an island in the middle.
I went scrolling through the maps. The last bit was completed between the printings of the 1975 & 1976 maps, only 7 years before I moved here.
The toll road from Chicago to South Bend, which I think is 80/90, has rest areas on both sides. Poor Knute Rockne has one named after him eastbound.
The Kansas Turnpike does have them in the middle.
