Changes have been made along the unofficial gravel detour routes near Grand Junction during the Highway 30 overpass bridge project.

Now that the main bridge is back open, Greene County Engineer Wade Weiss says secondary road crews have removed some of the temporary stop signs on the gravel detour routes. As the bridge project was underway this past spring, the County Supervisors approved a resolution to install six temporary stop signs. All six were located on V Avenue, with two on 185th Street, one on 210th Street, another one on 230th Street and two on 240th Street.

The temporary stop signs were a way to help control traffic on those routes and reduce the amount of accidents. Weiss says the traffic counts on the unofficial detour routes were around 2,500 vehicles per day while the overpass bridge was being replaced. Additionally, Weiss adds it was a difficult task trying to maintain those heavily traveled gravel roads.

“We’ve been out every weekend, since that project started. It may not be both days, but it was at least one day and a lot of the time it was both days. So those roads were being hit as often as we could, plus our normal maintenance.”

Weiss says they even had an agreement with the Iowa Department of Transportation, which provided extra white rock and calcium-chloride for dust controls on those routes.

The Supervisors recommended keeping two of the temporary stop signs on the northern gravel roads at 185th Street due to a house blocking an intersection, which they felt makes the intersection a dangerous situation.