June 11, 2007: Almost all the signs for Business 34 in Ottumwa are like this. It’s very weird. This is facing east on Albia Road as Business 34 turns onto Ferry Street, an intersection that’s being turned into a roundabout.
Business US 34 in Ottumwa has an awkward route. The city’s grid on the side northeast of the Des Moines River has streets that parallel the river, while the other side has true north-south streets except for a part that’s aligned to an oxbow lake that wasn’t cut off until the 1960s. This results in six turns along the route, two of which — Richmond Avenue to Ferry Street to Albia Road — are right in succession. The second turn wasn’t as sharp until after Wapello Street was built across the land inside the oxbow to intersect Albia and Ferry.
Now Ottumwa is doing something about the issue by making it even more complicated — with not one roundabout, but two, in immediate succession, at a cost of a million dollars.
The first one, officially a mini-roundabout at Richmond and Ferry, opened last June, according to this KTVO story that won’t let me embed properly. The second one, one block north (site of the photo above), has Phase II of construction starting this week. That’s where Wapello and Ferry become the other street name depending on which direction you’re going. A diagram from Ottumwa Radio shows a grotesque path for what had been a simple left turn, in part to create space from the other roundabout and possibly in part because the turn from Wapello Street to Albia Road is more important than Business 34 here.
The better solution would have been to connect Richmond Avenue and Albia Road directly, but that can’t be done because it would take out three businesses, including a relatively new Papa John’s. A closed Wendy’s could have been beneficial for land but is on the wrong side.
Ottumwa’s first roundabout was at the south US 34/63 junction, somewhat justifiable because it had been a tri-point intersection with some odd ramps. But these make following Business 34 a trying situation.