Maybe state will listen this time, fix Floyd intersection, mayor says

Avenue of the Saints

Maybe state will listen this time, fix Floyd intersection, mayor says

Development Corp. to re-state it’s call for change on Hwy. 218

Perhaps the outcry after the July 17 fatal crash at the Avenue of the Saints intersection in Floyd will finally bring change, but it’s not as if the push is brand new.

“I just want people to know we didn’t drop the ball,” Floyd Mayor Trevis O’Connell said. “We threw out the first pitch.”

O’Connell spoke at the Charles City Area Development Corporation’s meeting Wednesday about an online petition and Tuesday’s meeting in Floyd put on by local lawmakers. Both are aimed at getting the Iowa Department of Transportation moving on a solution.

Area Development Corporation Executive Director Tim Fox said he put the issue on the Wednesday’s meeting agenda because the corporation, Floyd and Floyd County were the first to bring the issue up.

With support from the board to continue pushing for change, Fox said, “We’ll go on record with a resolution in August.”

O’Connell said that after the crash, which claimed the life of motorcyclist Thomas “T.J.”

Houdek, 23 of Charles City, Floyd City Hall and his home received many calls about why the city hadn’t fixed the intersection. The city can’t, because it’s state highway, he said.

Some questioned why the city is allowing construction of a Love’s Truck Stop at the dangerous intersection.

“A lot of people didn’t think we should allow Love’s to build there,” O’Connell said. “You know, that’s a good corporation, it will be good tax base, good jobs, and if anything that will make (the state) improve that intersection.”

O’Connell assures people that local officials had not been sitting on their hands.

They just had not been able to move the state’s Transportation Department to action.

The mayor also said the statistics the state agency uses to determine whether an intersection needs change are flawed.

“One thing that is kind of odd is the DOT has a different formula for recording accidents, which is weird,” he said.

He referred to accident reports for 2006 to 2016 that he has received from the Transportation Department. “It shows an average of four accidents a year, which really isn’t that bad for that traffic, but it’s not true,” he said. “What they do, for example, if you have a fender bender and you’re within a 300-foot radius of the center of the intersection, that could make it count. But you also have to have $1,500 in damage to make it actually a statistic.”

A $500 fender bender still “takes a minimum of three police cars just to slow traffic for their own protection to get the stuff out of the way.”

A December 2008 death at the intersection is not included in those statistics because the victim died outside a 300-foot radius from the middle of the intersection, he said.

“We need to get on the radar of the DOT,” he said.

The Wednesday meeting was organized by area lawmakers after Floyd Resident T.J.

Wiemann started a Change.org petition about the intersection.

Rep. Todd Prichard, D-Charles City, said he hopes to deliver the petition by Aug. 9 to the Transportation Department’s commission board, which sets roadway priorities.

By Chris Baldus cbaldus@charlescitypress.com