So I talked with Gary Fox of the City of Des Moines yesterday.
Turns out our stoplight is only a “proposed project.” For which they have applied and received funding. And since the City Council hasn’t technically approved the project yet, there is no required notice to citizens yet. And he’s sure the City Council would love my input.
But the gist of our conversation was: damn the facts, we want to put in a stoplight and we’re going to, and it’s not technically passed the city council, but there’s no doubt it will.
This is actually what we were afraid would happen, to be honest. With the I-235 project going on, we had so much more traffic on our streets – both of them. And that traffic was psycho traffic. Added to the already psycho drivers we have anyway. We experienced way more accidents and increased traffic during the 235 project. Particularly when 42nd was the only exit that was open along this stretch of freeway.
All that said, there were only 6 accidents in the past 5 years that resulted in any degree of injury. 3 “major” and 3 minor. I can name 5 of those accidents for you. Two of the “major” injury accidents, the drivers were drunk and fled the scene on foot. We watched them. One of them kicked out his windshield and attempted to run away. The other had his girlfriend scoot over into the driver’s seat while he got out and walked casually down the street. The third “major” accident involved an elderly woman who admitted she couldn’t see very well and she plowed into somebody. The two”minor” accidents that I remember were all a combination of speeding and running the stopsign.
I don’t know that a stoplight is going to solve the three main culprits at our corner: drunk driving, speeding, and running traffic signals.
OK, but that aside, Mr. Fox also dropped these humdingers.
1) They’re not going to acquire any of our property. Damn straight you’re not, I said to myself. But they are going to widen the street 3.5 feet. He’s not sure if that means they’ll remove my tree. But there’s no way they won’t have to.
Let’s pause a moment. That tree sits on the east side of our house and is MASSIVE. It provides shade over the entire front half of my house. My un air conditioned house. With that gone, we lose the shade on our porch, we lose the shade over the front room, the dining room, and the sunroom. Houses built in the era in which my house was built were built to rely upon two methods of cooling – lots of open windows and lots of shade. That tree has been providing shade for my house for nearly a century. And they’re going to take it out, just like that.
2) The original plan was to just widen 42nd to 4 lanes. I said that there’s no room to do that, particularly with my house right there. Yes, he says, the plan was to remove that house. *choke* Yeah. Then he starts talking eminent domain and blah blah.
3) He also tried to pull a “any one of those accidents could have been fatal.” Well, yes. Any accident anywhere could be fatal.
4) Last, he actually told me that the accident level at that corner was “higher than we’d like” which is of course true. Even 1 accident is too many. But then he admitted that it wasn’t particularly high in comparison
So anyway. They will actively seek citizen input when they hit the “design phase,” which means (I asked) they want to know what the residents think about what the curbs look like. Um. I want them to look like they do now.
And the lights won’t go in until early 2008.
I’ll be honest. I’m not sure I want to live here without that tree, with a wider road, and with a stoplight.
We’re going to have our realtor look up info on whether property values go down after a stoplight is installed.
