the riverfront. Highway planners went ahead with this despite opposition over having an elevated highway through the city. Initially the highway was planned as a complete limited access roadway with no at-grade intersections. But after a campaign by local business interests, the design was changed so that there would be two at-grade traffic lights near the riverfront. The approach to the Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge was rebuilt to accommodate the new highway. In 1993, the new US 61/151 highway was completed. The highway has helped to reduce much of the congestion in downtown Dubuque. Heavy trucks that are merely going through the city are now able to use the highway instead of local roads. Travel from the southern to the northern ends of the route - once at least a 20-minute journey - has been at least cut in half. Four lane expansion on highways 61 and 151 elsewhere in Iowa has given Dubuque four lane connections to both the Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. With the completion of this expansion of U.S. 61 in the mid-1990s the city finally had a direct four lane connection to Interstate 80. As part of the U.S. 151 expansion project, the highway was expanded to four lanes between Dubuque and Madison, Wisconsin. Construction was finally finished in 2005, which resulted in a direct four lane connection between the two cities. Bypasses In the 1980s, the Northwest Arterial project was begun. It was intended to serve as a bypass around Dubuque, going northeast from US 20 at the west end of Dubuque out to US 52 / State Highway 3 north. Initially, a four lane section from US Highway 20 up to JFK Road was graded. However, only two lanes were brought to completion. In the 1990s, the other two lanes were completed, and several stoplights were added to the road. In the late 1990s, Dubuque turned control of the road over to the state, who then named the road as State Highway 32. At that point, the Northwest Arterial was expanded from JFK Road out to US 52. As a result, there is now a four lane bypass of Dubuque to the north. With the completion of the Northwest Arterial, more and more businesses are locating their operations along the highway. And the number of houses located near the Northwest Arterial has greatly increased over the past 15 years. For a number of years,