DES MOINES, Iowa — With construction of one of Des Moines’ most notorious intersections nearing completion, city leaders are eyeing their next project — and it’s just down the street.

“This intersection has been interesting for a long time,” says Jim Hunter, owner of Snookie’s Malt Shop, which looks out at the cockeyed, three-way intersection of Beaver Avenue and 41st Street.

“First off, nobody will signal what they’re gonna do.”

City leaders concur. The intersection has befuddled northbound drivers at 41st Street for decades.

“It’s hard to judge,” explains city traffic engineer, Steve Naber, “if a car going southbound on Beaver is going to continue going south onto 41st Street or stay on Beaver Avenue.”

“So it was a guessing game as to when you jumped out into traffic,” adds city councilman, Chris Coleman, who represents the Beaverdale area.

Hunter says accidents were so frequent — and often so dramatic — that Snookie’s actually stocked fire extinguishers along with the cups, straws, and ice cream cones.

“We went through quite a few,” Hunter laughs.

A grant from the Iowa DOT helped Des Moines purchase and then remove a restaurant on the southeast corner of the intersection and then completely reconfigure the crossing.

“This will create a T intersection that acts like any other intersection up and down Beaver Avenue,” he says.

The project was expected to be completed later this year but is far ahead of schedule.

“We’re looking at maybe five to six weeks from now,” says Naber.

The new intersection is expected to be an instant improvement, but it may also shift the spotlight to another one of Beaverdale’s traffic headaches: the three-way crossing at Beaver and Forest Avenues, just a few blocks to the southeast.

“We’ve had a number of crashes at that intersection,” Naber says, “and unfortunately, 75% of those crashes are angle crashes, which tend to result in severe injuries and even fatalities.”

Naber says a roundabout is the likely solution for this intersection.

“It’s not funded yet, but we’re going to start looking at that — and at more changes for Forest Avenue in the Drake area — very soon.”

Forest Avenue falls under the dreaded classification of “4-lane, undivided roadway” — the bane of cities looking to improve traffic safety. Naber says Forest (like Ingersoll, Euclid, and many other aging-yet-busy Des Moines roadways) is a likely candidate to be restriped into a 3-lane road with a turning lane down the middle.

Douglas Avenue will likely get the same treatment from MLK Parkway west to Merle Hay Road as both the city and state look to improve its poor safety record for both motorists and pedestrians.

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