Three Ankeny Boulevard Intersections Make Top 10 On State List Of Crash Ratings

ANKENY, IA. -- A statewide ranking of intersections with the highest crash rates puts Ankeny at the top of the list. Overall, three locations in the community made the top ten in the Iowa Department of Transportation list of 200 intersections that are candidates for safety improvements. All were on Ankeny Boulevard.

The list is based on crash reports over the five-year period from 2012 through 2016 and takes into account the total number of crashes and crash rates, weighted at 25 percent each, and the severity of crashes, which received a 50 percent weighting in the overall score.

Ankeny Boulevard and First Street was the top intersection on the list and that location saw 116 crashes that resulted in 57 injuries, according to a Des Moines Register story that said more than 36,000 vehicles pass through the intersection daily. The crashes recorded at that location included five serious injuries, but no fatalities.

(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Ankeny Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

The Ankeny intersection "has a ton of traffic and, I’m sure, a ton of crashes," Steve Gent, director of the Iowa DOT office of traffic and safety, told the Register. "It’s probably a medium-to-low on the severity scale, but it ranks pretty high on those two other scales."

Ankeny's other top-ten entries on the DOT crash analysis list were the intersection of Ankeny Boulevard and Southeast Magazine Road in the eighth spot and Ankeny Boulevard at Southwest Third/Southeast Third streets in tenth place. Three other Ankeny intersections were among the top 200 sites statewide on the list.

Around the metro area, Des Moines was the only other city with entries on the DOT list.

Gent told the Register the rankings list areas where needed improvements are a priority, rather than merely indicating hazard sites.

"There are all kinds of ways to slice and dice this," Gent told the Register. "Because the reality is we could fix all of these. We could close them down for the next five years and there will still be a top 200 list."

The City of Ankeny already has plans for intersection improvements at First Street and Ankeny Boulevard, Public Works Director Mark Mueller told the Register. The city received a $500,000 grant from the DOT for safety improvements and next year will begin a $650,000 project that will include removing a westbound left-turn lane on First Street.

"We know there's a crash history there and that's why we're moving forward with that project to address that issue," Mueller told the Register.

Overall, Ankeny plans $1.6 million in capital improvement projects related to traffic safety during the fiscal years 2018 through 2021, and nearly $7.2 million in projects is planned at intersections citywide during that period, according to a regional transportation improvement report released this summer by the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Image via Pixabay