NEWS CHRONICLE PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Kelli and Craig McCreary of rural Toledo converse with engineer Ben Wilkinson of MSA Professional Services during a meeting about the planned roundabout at the intersection of Highway 63 and Business 30 last Tuesday night. The meeting was held at the Tama Civic Center.

A little over a year after officials with the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) began the process of reducing Highway 63 through Tama and Toledo from four to three lanes, they held a public meeting to discuss another major change on the horizon at one of the busiest intersections in the conjoined communities.

An estimated 36 people attended the event last Tuesday night at the Tama Civic Center to either weigh in or gather more information on the proposal to remove the traffic lights at the intersection of Highway 63 and Business 30 in Toledo and convert to a roundabout system, which utilizes yield signs and moves traffic in one direction around a central island. Most studies have shown that roundabouts reduce the number of crashes and the general speed of drivers as they pass through them. Along with the DOT, engineers from MSA Professional Services were also on hand.

When the News Chronicle shared a notice of the meeting on its Facebook page last week, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative, with commenters questioning the need for such an apparatus in a small town, expressing concern for larger vehicles like semi trucks and predicting an increase in accidents as a result of the change.

Jeremey Vortherms, an Assistant District 1 Engineer with the Iowa DOT, spoke about the research that went into the decision to pursue the conversion, noting that “addressing the needs” at the intersection was part of the previous conversation around reducing Highway 63 from four to three lanes through Tama and Toledo. The traffic signals there, he said, are aging and reaching the end of their shelf life anyway.

“The traffic signals aren’t necessarily warranted with the volumes (of traffic) that we have today. So as we look at what to do next, we take the old traffic signal equipment out, we’re looking at what kind of intersection controls we have. There’s other stop configurations, and then there’s a roundabout,” Vortherms said. “And when we look at what achieves the safety goals of the department (and) the city, the roundabout has the same type of safety performance as other types of control. And yet, we get the idea of free flowing movement, we can slow volume, people can come and go, and they can ingress/egress. The intersection has got some geometry that makes some of the turns a little complicated, so this helps address all of those deficiencies with the current situation and really gets us to provide a safe intersection and an updated intersection.”

NEWS CHRONICLE PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY A diagram presented at the meeting shows a rendering of the future roundabout at the intersection of Highway 63 and Business 30 in Toledo. Iowa Department of Transportation officials intend to start construction on the project next spring.

The criticisms and concerns, he added, are not new, and Vortherms acknowledged that the community sees a large volume of oversized truck traffic — specifically, vehicles transporting wind turbine blades. Ultimately, the DOT works to make accommodations for all vehicles no matter how big or small, he said.

Some at the meeting had similar reservations to the ones already expressed on social media, but Kelli McCreary, who lives on a farm north of Toledo, said she had prior experience with roundabouts in Florida and “got used to them” while she was there.

“I found that they slow people down, and they’re easy. You yield to the person on the left just like you’re supposed to,” she said.

Toledo Mayor Brian Sokol, who was in attendance on Tuesday, said local officials have known about the plans for the last few years, and he felt they “made sense” in the long run.

“There’s a lot of cost people don’t realize as far as the lights, the control system. That falls back on the city, as far as expense, so if we get a lightning strike, that expense is on us,” Sokol said.

NEWS CHRONICLE PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Traffic is shown passing through the intersection of Highway 63 and Business 30 in Toledo last Tuesday evening. The Iowa DOT plans to construct a roundabout there next year with the expectation of finishing it by late fall.

City Administrator Kendall Jordan noted that one strike can cost the city upwards of $15,000, and while roundabouts are typically placed in larger communities — Cedar Falls being a prime example — Sokol cited Strawberry Point as an example of a small town where one can work well.

“This is not gonna be a Cedar Falls University Avenue sized roundabout. I have faith that they will have a design big enough for large equipment,” he said. “Again, my biggest concern is just the amount of traffic at the businesses during peak hours as far as traffic control, where at least now we have a controlled stop.”

Currently, construction is slated to begin in the spring of 2025 with plans to finish by the end of the fall. The DOT will “find a way” to keep north-south traffic on Highway 63 moving throughout the project, Vortherms said, but traffic on Business 30 will be “intermittently impacted.”

“At the worst, we’ll have one leg of the intersection closed at a time with a detour through some of the local streets for local traffic, and then at the best during construction, we’ll allow everybody to kind of get off of Business 30 onto Highway 63 with a ride in, ride out type configuration.”

The project will be entirely funded by non-local dollars.

“The department’s really looking at how do we improve safety and operations inside our communities, so this particular intersection change is connected to the prior work with the four to three (lane reduction). We have other work going on north and south of town where we’re trying to add passing lanes and stuff,” Vortherms said. “So in general, we’re looking at the entirety of the U.S. 63 corridor (to assess) globally, what’s going on? What are the types of drivers? We’ve got some regional travel. How do we make this the best and safest for those that want to come through the Tama-Toledo community, and then for those that live here too, what opportunity can we give them to make sure lives are better?”

And Sokol is optimistic that the conversion — although it could be painful at first — will be beneficial down the road.

“The three-lane, when that came through, was a learning curve. It was change, and it’s worked out pretty well. Safety wise, we’ve had no incidents that I’m aware of, so I think it’ll be alright,” he said.