U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) welcomed news from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) that Iowa will receive over $76.2 million in federal funding to improve roadway safety across the state. This funding will impact Iowans in Palo Alto, Dubuque, Polk, Dallas, Warren, Hancock, Cerro Gordo, Franklin, Humboldt, Kossuth, Winnebago, Worth, Wright, Van Buren, Pottawattamie, Cedar, Jones, Muscatine and Washington counties. The funding will be administered through DOT’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program, which was established in the Grassley-backed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
“Iowa families and manufacturers depend on the safety and reliability of our roads for everyday work and travel. I voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law with Iowans’ future in mind, and now 76 million more dollars are flowing to our state as a result. This federal funding will better connect our communities and keep Iowans safe,” Grassley said.
Details on the DOT awards follow:
- Old Lincoln Highway Corridor Safety Project (Pottawattamie County): $19,900,000 to implement systemic safety improvements along 11.6 miles of Old Lincoln Highway between Sumac Road and Coit Road. The project addresses a documented corridor-wide pattern of severe lane-departure and run-off-road crashes on a high-risk corridor with 121 crashes between 2019 and 2023, including four fatal crashes and eight serious injury crashes.
- Iowa Rural Roads Safety Initiative (Cedar, Jones, Muscatine, and Washington Counties): $11,600,000 to implement the Iowa Rural Road Safety Initiative on three high-risk rural corridors identified in each county’s Action Plan. Improvements on these corridors will include installation of four-foot paved shoulders with Safety Edge, centerline and edgeline rumble strips, enhanced pavement markings and curve delineation across 27 total miles on County Road X40, Garfield Avenue and Vine Avenue.
- Mobilizing for Safety (Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Operation): $14,832,000 to implement nine roadway safety projects across the region that address speeding, failure to yield and pedestrian crossing risk on the high-injury network and high-risk network. The program includes two roundabouts, three pedestrian underpasses and four intersection and pedestrian enhancement projects.
- Road to Zero: Van Buren County Rural Roads Safety Project: $7,280,000 to implement Action Plan-identified safety improvements along 9.7 miles of the Route V64 corridor between J40 and Highway 16, including eight high-risk curves and two high-risk intersections.
- Northern Iowa Roadway Safety Improvements (Cerro Gordo, Franklin, Hancock, Humboldt, Kossuth, Palo Alto, Winnebago, Worth, and Wright Counties): $7,088,000 to implement 15 rural roadway safety projects at six segments, five curves and four intersections.
- Adel Highway 169 Safety Corridor Improvement Project: $6,350,400 to reconstruct approximately one mile of U.S. Highway 169 from Greenwood Hill Drive to 302nd Street from a two-lane rural section to a three-lane urban roadway with a two-way left-turn lane. The project will address a Priority Corridor on the high-injury network where roadway design, 55 mile-per-hour operating conditions, and increasing school and local traffic create elevated risk for turning conflicts and severe crashes.
- Polk County Communications Upgrade for Roadway Crash Response: $5,293,960 to upgrade public safety communications infrastructure that supports roadway crash response, traffic incident management and post-crash care across Polk County.
- Dubuque SMART Safe Corridors Initiative: $3,443,040 to support traffic management system through rail crossing monitoring, predictive blockage analytics, emergency vehicle routing and signal preemption integration, expanded vulnerable road user detection, traveler information alerts and evaluation to inform future regional deployment.
- Palo Alto County Post-Crash Care and Emergency Transport Risk Reduction Initiative: $415,711 to improve rural post-crash care after serious roadway crashes. The project will equip ambulances serving Palo Alto County with advanced monitoring, prehospital blood administration capability and point-of-care ultrasound to test trauma-care tools, improve field decision-making and inform future rural EMS and post-crash care initiatives countywide.
