There are still several cars and trucks still stuck in the ditches along the interstate highways following the blizzard last week. Iowa D-O-T maintenance engineer, Bob Younie, says his department works with the state patrol to help get those vehicles pulled out. “When folks drive off the road and they need a wrecker to get their car out — and semis too for that matter — we understand the impatience of getting the vehicle back out and getting it fix or repaired or on the way, whatever has to be done,” Younie says. “But we also have to balance the safety concerns of the traffic backups that are associated with the towing vehicles pulling especially those big trucks out.”

Wednesday was a big travel day after the holiday. “There’s a lot of folks on the road maybe coming back from Christmas, so it’s a little harder to get a closure in place today that doesn’t have large backups than it will be later in time. So, it’s a balance of public mobility and public safety,” Younie says. He says traffic can back up for miles as the wreckers have to close off traffic to pull the bigger trucks out of the ditch. An 80-mile stretch of Interstate-35 was closed to traffic Thursday during the height of the storm as Younie says they tried to prevent more accidents and people sliding into the ditch.

He says I-35 has a set of gates near Ames for northbound traffic and just north of Highway 18 near Clear Lake and Mason City for southbound traffic that they used to close the road after several collisions. “And the system really works well from out standpoint to be able to effectively close off the interstate. And this again was a public safety issue. It wasn’t safe for people to drive out there,” Younie says. Younie says the state patrol monitors the situation determines when it is and isn’t safe to tow vehicles during severe weather.

(Radio Iowa)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Warren Buffett’s company has sold off the two short-line railroads it discovered owning this fall to satisfy regulators who might have reviewed Berkshire Hathaway’s 2010 acquisition of the BNSF railroad. Berkshire told the Transportation Department’s Surface Transportation Board earlier this month that it had recently completed the sale of both short-line railroads ahead of schedule.

If Berkshire had reported owning those railroads when it acquired Burlington National Sante Fe Corporation, the Surface Transportation Board would have scrutinized the deal. Berkshire sold the 12-mile-long WCTU railroad that serves an industrial park near Medford, Oregon to RVTR Rail Holdings in December.

The 6-mile-long CBEC railroad that serves one of MidAmerican Energy’s coal plants near Council Bluffs, Iowa, was sold to its two other co-owners in November.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — A Council Bluffs couple with a limousine business says they want to offer services every year to homeless people in the area. The Council Bluffs Nonpareil reports Jim Kelley and his wife, Christine, offered party buses to nearly 70 homeless people this month as part of a holiday present. Many of the participants were children. Other local businesses provided dinner and dessert before the buses and a limousine took the participants to a train museum. Guests were then taken on a city tour to view holiday lights.

The couple says it was their first time organizing the service, and they plan to make it an annual event.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press