Missouri River flooding in Iowa and Missouri affecting I-29

George,

Thanks for adopting this thread and keeping it current.

Very helpful.

Mark

Does anyone know the status of US-75 N. After calculating everything out it looks like my quickest route from Columbia, MO to Omaha, NE would be to take 70W to 75N which goes straight into Omaha. Does anyone know if 75N is still open? I know it runs close to river so I am slightly worried. If it isn't, what would be my ideal route (extremely time sensitive!)?

........I do recall reading that either the KS or the NE Dept of Transportation was strongly encouraging travelers to AVOID US 75 as an alternate, citing large scale and lengthy lane closures due to ongoing construction. I further seem to recall their advice mentioning "lengthy delays" likely to be encountered by travelers insistent on using US 75.

I changed my plans concerning routing around the I-29 closures once I read about this back in late June.

Foy

From Columbia, take your normal route through KC and up I-29 to St. Joe, then US-71/US-34/I-29/I-80 as I indicated in my previous post.

Hello All,

It looks like there is lots of great info on this thread! I was wondering what would be the easiest and fastest way from Sioux City, IA to Kansas City, Kansas?! I will be traveling this in a couple weeks and am not looking forward to all the detours! Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!!

You really just have to look up at the Route suggested previously by GLC. The only exception is that since you don't need to go to Omaha itself, you'd want to head east on I-680/I-80 to US-71, and take that all the way to St. Joe.

You would have to take I-680 east, because I-29 is closed from there to I-480. In your case, you could save some miles by taking US-59 south instead of US-71, that's open to I-29 at Craig. Check the Iowa and Missouri DOT sites before you leave to see if I-29 has reopened yet.

I just made a Kansas City-Omaha-Lincoln trip this past weekend and thus had to navigate this region, and thought I'd share some up-to-date information.

I-29 will not be viable again for a long time. The roadway is completely destroyed in much of the affected area and will need to be totally reconstructed.

http://www.iowadot.gov/floods/2011/images/flood90.jpg
(I-29 north of Council Bluffs, image from Iowa DOT)

The non-interstate routes through the flood plain have not fared any better.

http://www.iowadot.gov/floods/2011/images3/flood17.jpg
(IA-2 between I-29 and Nebraska City, image from Iowa DOT)

So get to know detours if you have to traverse this region regularly -- you're going to be using them for a while. Personally I don't expect to be using I-29 again before next summer, barring some superhuman construction effort, and even that is contingent on the Missouri River actually receding sometime soon -- last I heard there was still plenty more water to come.

If you are coming from well outside the lower Missouri Valley region and can just avoid the I-29 corridor completely, do so. If I was in St. Louis, I would head straight north to I-80 or I-90 and figure out a route west from there. In a lot of cases this has become the only option.

For KC to Omaha, the current local detour diverts you onto US-136 east at Rock Port to US-59 north at Tarkio to US-34 west at Emerson and then rejoins I-29. The reverse of that route is the southbound detour. This adds about 45-60 minutes. This detour has actually been signed by Iowa and Missouri DOTs.

From KC to Lincoln (and points west on I-80) you can take I-70 west to US-75 at Topeka to NE-2 west at Nebraska City into Lincoln. There is some repaving on US-75 between Topeka and Holton but nothing seriously impacting unless you catch it at peak hour (KDOT has suspended the project, probably due to US-75 suddenly becoming a major detour route, but the lane closures are still there). This is the simplest route, but there are a lot of alternate paths that can shave some time off (US-73/US-36/K-7).

If you want to explore other routes, one stretch in northeast Kansas you definitely want to avoid is US-36 just east of US-75 between Fairview and Hiawatha. Two bridge reconstruction projects have it reduced to a single 10' lane with timed signals handling flow one direction at a time. If you run into heavy traffic here (which is more likely given all the detouring through the region), you can expect to be parked for quite a while.

Thanks for joining and welcome to the Great American RoadTrip Forum. That list of detours and the photos are real "eye-openers" Routing in the area just got very complicated!

Mark

From reading local sources, it looks like it could be be 2 YEARS before I-680 will be open between I-29 and Omaha. The road is essentially gone.

As far as I-29 goes, it's probably going to be late October before the water is down enough to even take a look at the damage and estimate how long it's going to take to get it open again. Iowa DOT and MODOT *wants* to get it open by the end of the year, but that's all dependent on how badly the roadbed has been undermined.

IA-2 supposedly looks as bad as I-680, that's not going to be open for a long time.

If you take alternates such as US-59 or US-71, expect congestion and speed traps in towns such as Tarkio and Clarinda.