This new in after this new items caused trail user outrage in late March. Bridge work on Highway 34 will shut down Wabash Trace Trail for the summer
Crews are working on a temporary bicycle detour around a bridge construction project that was to have blocked a section of the Wabash Trace Nature Trail in southwest Iowa.
A side path just west of the popular trail north of Malvern will allow bicyclists to walk their bikes around work on the U.S. Highway 34 bridge, said Rebecca Castle, president of the Southwest Iowa Nature Trails Project Inc.
Castle’s group is a volunteer nonprofit that manages the trail.
From what the Iowa Department of Transportation told her, Castle said, the 4-foot-wide side path, due to be completed in a few days, will have a granular material surface 4 inches thick.
The detour will be open for two months while crews work on the first part of the project, Castle said.
The entire project is expected to be finished in 120 to 130 days.
The section of the Wabash Trace that runs under the bridge was to have been closed during most of the work. That section of the trail will be replaced with a north-south concrete tunnel. Over the tunnel will be a new section of east-west Highway 34.