Ding! Ding! Ding! You're right on the money with that comment...I had totally forgot about that. Getting north/south from 80/35 to downtown is a huge pain in the a**. A four-lane road connecting MLK to 80/35 would be so nice. Instead of going bypass crazy on the edges of town, they need to take a serious look at that
Des Moines Southwest Connector
- Thread starter DaddyMac
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Ding! Ding! Ding! You're right on the money with that comment...I had totally forgot about that. Getting north/south from 80/35 to downtown is a huge pain in the a**. A four-lane road connecting MLK to 80/35 would be so nice. Instead of going bypass crazy on the edges of town, they need to take a serious look at that
You can't get from anywhere to downtown :wink:
I get what you mean though. Not good ways from the SW. Fleur and 63rd are the only ways over the river.
No throughways from 80/35 on the north side, to 235 from 2nd all the way out to 22nd/86th, I believe.
And Grand and Ingersol are no real treat either - not to mention don't extend into the western subs at all. Hickman pretty much dies around 6th ave and Douglas isn't much of a downtown route either.
Its probably to get some of the traffic out of the west mixmaster area. That area is becoming more and more congested and more lanes isnt much of an option. If you could divert the 35N to 80W and the 80E to 35S traffic out of that, youre taking quite a bit of the traffic out of there.
Nothing really historic. More environmental concerns.
Here's a good analysis: MLK Extension Point-Counterpoint (revised) | the Des Moines Perspective
Which begs the question. If that is a concern, why did you chose to live in Johnston when there are plenty of places to live where there are straight through commutes?
Because the positives of Johnston outweighs this one negative at least for me. It's not too bad for me since I work early.
It takes me roughly 20 minutes from my garage to the front door at work. That's pretty quick.
Necessary? No but it makes sense for traffic.
When 235 was built some people probably didn't think it was necessary. The same for any new road built. It would make the commute easier for a lot of people.
But this won't happen in a vacuum. It will be built on the backs of taxpayers. With all the deficits we're dealing with now, is this really the best use of our tax dollars?
If you build it now, its probably a lot cheaper than building it when the area is fully developed and there's a lot more traffic to reroute.
Good point and I agree. The only thing I would say is if they are going to spend money on new roads then this would make sense. It makes a lot more sense than other projects being talked about.
That is some of the fallacy of new road construction. New roads encourage development further and further from the central city in a metro...and thus creating more and more traffic.
We have a lot of room for infill right now and don't need to be using taxpayer money at this point to expand the boundries of the metro. Maybe in a few decades that will be necessary, but it certainly isn't now.
You can look at it that way and I would somewhat agree but there is another way to look at the situation.
If Des Moines doesn't make it easy to get downtown and let's say WDM does than you may see some companies relocate even more to the burbs. I've been involved in planning relocations and this is one important consideration that businesses look at before they move. I can tell you that we lost a lot more people when we moved them downtown than we did when we moved them out to WDM. The only complaints we heard when we moved some out to WDM was lack of a nearby bus.
You also have to consider the non-business factor. I'm more likely to seek entertainment downtown if there is an easier/faster way. Right now I drive out to the west mix-master to get onto 235 and head downtown. If I didn't like the downtown so much it would be a lot easier for me just to head out to WDM for my entertainment. Same can be said for shopping, farmers markets, outdoor recreation, etc
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Thats the thing about this project. Alot of the area being mentioned for the road, especially between Orilla and the Park Ave is much closer than West of West Des Moines and largely undeveloped. There really isn't many houses out there that will be displaced.
Agreed, which goes to the point I made on another thread on why it is important for cities to work together as one metro in terms of development and not compete against each other. It is in the best interest of everyone to do so.