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A corridor that extends north and south through Des Moines has been in the planning stages for years, and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway has sounded like a sweet spot for a smooth extension northward past Interstate 80. However, MLK Parkway isn’t the only traffic artery that is being considered by Polk County as an option for improved north-south traffic flow through Des Moines. The county also is exploring routes such as Second Avenue, Merle Hay Road and even Beaver Avenue, although the majority of the proposals include MLK Parkway.

“A lot of the alternatives come back to MLK (Parkway) because they have so many opportunities for where we could place the road, such as the west bank (of the Des Moines River) realignment off of 26th Street,” said Jamie Bents, the transportation planner at Snyder & Associates Engineers and Planners LLC, the firm that is working on the project. “We have several along the east bank of the river as well. We have alternatives that go to 12th (Street) that can go to Euclid (Avenue) and MLK (Parkway).”

Bents said the area being considered for a north-south corridor has increased significantly since the study began in 2005.

“Originally, it was centered around 26th and the MLK (Parkway) corridor,” Bents said. “There have been a lot of study changes, a lot of going back and forth, and that is how we ended up between Second Avenue and Merle Hay (Road).”

The 16 alternatives, which include one no-build alternative and a transit alternative that would be considered in combination with any of the other alternatives, have been developed based on public and government feedback on the project.

“We have to pick each one and get the pros and cons and then see if they meet our project requirements,” said Larry Land, public works director for Polk County, which received the project instead of the city because it extends beyond the city limits.

Bents explained that the county has hosted various public forums to ensure that residents had a voice in the decisions, and that a lot of the alternative routes even originated from the public forums.

However, Bents said that the transit alternative, which is based on the results of the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority’s (DART) Rapid Transit Corridor Study, doesn’t appear as though it will work.

Bents said that DART has determined six alternatives for its corridor study, and the routes selected would only directly affect the travel patterns in the Northeast 14th Street and the Northwest Second Avenue areas, which the DART study claims would be better suited for bus rapid transit rather than light-rail transit.

“Since it wouldn’t be rail and would be bus, it would no longer make up for the (transit) alternative,” Bents said, noting that the county’s north-south corridor transit alternative only considered light-rail transit in the proposal and not bus transit. However, she is waiting for DART to make its final decision.

Land said that he expects the alternatives to get narrowed down within the next three to five months, and when that happens, more specific studies can get under way.

“The final goal is to find that route,” Land said. “I think we are going forward with it, making progress. Progress is not something that can be measured by speed (in this case). It’s not fast, but we are going forward.”