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27 August 2014 · the corridor leaves the street
The new U.S. 31 opened on 27 August 2014, and Lakeville's main street got its traffic back — a tenth of it. The state's release that day is titled "Governor Pence Officially Opens New US 31 Plymouth to South Bend" (its text carried by two independent route records citing it; the banked spine carries it as INDOT's). The project as the department's own descriptions state it: the corridor between US 30 in Plymouth and the US 20 bypass in South Bend is twenty miles, including fifteen miles of new highway alignment and four new interchanges, at $225 million; "approximately 15 miles of the 20-mile corridor will be built on new terrain east of the existing route. The south end of the project uses existing US 31, but all grade crossings will be eliminated in this existing section… The project includes bridges that go over or under 24 roads or railroads." At Lakeville the freeway runs about a mile east of downtown, and the old road's traffic fell from 27,000 vehicles a day to 5,400 (the federal profile, banked). The town's freeway address is its interchange: Exit 239, State Road 4, Lakeville — in the department's interchange book, in its own form: "31 | 239 | S.R. 4 | Lakeville | St. Joseph" (official, read at search strength); the next interchange north is Exit 245, Kern Road, South Bend. At the ribbon-cutting a portion of the Plymouth–South Bend section was dedicated as the Richard W. Mangus Memorial Highway, "in honor of the local state representative who supported the freeway's construction" — the exact limits of the dedicated portion were not stated in a carrier reached (gap G-RD-11), and a pointer carrier's colour ("Indiana Route 31 near Potato Creek State Park and Lakeville is named in his honor") prints as that carrier's approximation only. The man, at the pointer strength the people build owns: Richard W. Mangus (23 July 1930 – 4 February 2008), born in Lakeville — "Representative Mangus was born in Lakeville, Indiana, in 1930" (Congressional Record, 24 March 2004) — a lifelong resident, elected to the Indiana House in November 1972 and serving 1973–2004, succeeded by Jackie Walorski; his own farm had lost land to an earlier US 31 expansion, after which he became politically active. The road he spent a career widening around other towns finally bypassed his own, six years after his death, with his name on a portion of it.
All Indiana U.S. Route Interchanges (official); Congressional Record, 24 March 2004 and 2008 (Mangus, pointer).