Best suburb of Des Moines? (West Des Moines, Ankeny: YMCA, school district, mall)

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

We're having our house in Las Vegas remodeled while we are still here in Iowa. I do a lot of it's this time here so it's that time there when calling.

It's a bit more confusing since I am in AZ and we don't change our clocks. This time of year we are pacific time, in the winter we are mountain time. So now there is a 2 hour difference between my mom and I (she is in Illinois) but once she sets her clocks, one hour.

[eagetal96]

Here's my 2 cents. Ankeny traffic sucks period. Worst commute of any burbs and all the cool stuff is out west, good malls/shopping...... WDSM is nice but housing is a bit spendy. I've lived in a few areas and I prefer Waukee. 10-15 minutes to jordan creek area. Close to the clive aquatic center and jordan creek pool. Also adel 7 miles west of waukee recently built a nice waterpark. Taxes are a bit high but the schools are great and the community had a nice small town feel with access to all the nice stuff. It's also a 25 minute commute to the airport which isn't bad at all.

[maniac77]

IMO the best suburb is West Des Moines, especially the older parts that were here before the Jordan Creek explosion around a decade ago. I live near the Valley Junction area of West Des Moines, and it's equidistant (about 10 minutes) from Downtown Des Moines and Jordan Creek Town Center. It's relatively close to the airport, and it's pretty much in the middle of everything. It has two malls, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods and a bunch of shopping (i.e. Costco) and restaurants you can't get anywhere else in the metro (i.e. Cheesecake Factory). It has an established downtown (Valley Junction) and the rents and home prices are reasonable in the older parts of West Des Moines (though more outrageous the further west you go). The schools are excellent, the crime rate is low (even in the poorer areas), and there's a cool bike trail that goes through the city. The entire city has a park-like feel to me.

I've never liked the feel or traffic of Ankeny, the cookie-cutterness of Waukee, the overwhelming police presence in Johnston, the 25 mph speed limit in Windsor Heights that's strictly enforced by parked police cars, the red-light cameras in Clive, the bad reputation of Altoona, and I can't tell where Des Moines ends and Urbandale begins. However, I think West Des Moines is just dandy.

[Meemur]

Ankeny has traffic?

I used to sit in traffic about 25 - 35 minutes on a good day before I moved here. The so-called "rush hour" in Ankeny is nothing, really, and there are alternatives to getting on or off the freeway at Oralabor, which seems to be a choke point. It's faster to use Delaware Rd.

[duster1979]

Originally Posted by Meemur

Ankeny has traffic?

I used to sit in traffic about 25 - 35 minutes on a good day before I moved here. The so-called "rush hour" in Ankeny is nothing, really, and there are alternatives to getting on or off the freeway at Oralabor, which seems to be a choke point. It's faster to use Delaware Rd.

I don't like city traffic at all - Fairfield is too congested for me - but I never thought Ankeny traffic was all that bad other than the Mix Master (which I don't really count because it's easily avoidable). It seemed like there were a lot of traffic lights on Ankeny Blvd/Hwy 69 between Oralabor and the north end, but those were pretty easy to bypass as well.

Maybe it's worse than the other suburbs, but if that's the worse you've got you should count your blessings.

[atler8]

I've not been in Ankeny for years other than to pass it by on I-35.
Does the city have an all-the-ball traffic engineering department that synchronizes the lights on Ankeny Blvd. which apparently is still the biggest traffic carrier in the city?
Light synchronization is vital anywhere even in small towns as witnessed by the lack of it and the resultant mess of congestion in the downtown area of the small town (pop. 12,000) in Wisconsin where my brother lives.

duster
Fairfield, which you mentioned, is a tad smaller than that. Is their problem rooted in a lack of such light timing?

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by atler8

I've not been in Ankeny for years other than to pass it by on I-35.
Does the city have an all-the-ball traffic engineering department that synchronizes the lights on Ankeny Blvd. which apparently is still the biggest traffic carrier in the city?
Light synchronization is vital anywhere even in small towns as witnessed by the lack of it and the resultant mess of congestion in the downtown area of the small town (pop. 12,000) in Wisconsin where my brother lives.

duster
Fairfield, which you mentioned, is a tad smaller than that. Is their problem rooted in a lack of such light timing?

I went to Ankeny a lot for stuff, and the lights at Delaware and Oralabor were ridiculous. A huge intersection and they only allowed about 3 cars to go before changing. I avoided that area between 4 and 6 PM for sure.

[duster1979]

Originally Posted by atler8

I've not been in Ankeny for years other than to pass it by on I-35.
Does the city have an all-the-ball traffic engineering department that synchronizes the lights on Ankeny Blvd. which apparently is still the biggest traffic carrier in the city?
Light synchronization is vital anywhere even in small towns as witnessed by the lack of it and the resultant mess of congestion in the downtown area of the small town (pop. 12,000) in Wisconsin where my brother lives.

duster
Fairfield, which you mentioned, is a tad smaller than that. Is their problem rooted in a lack of such light timing?

I'm just talking about volume of traffic. I get impatient if there are more than two cars ahead of me at a stoplight or sign.

I don't think there are two lights in Fairfield close enough together that synchronization would have any impact, but I know what you mean. People used to complain about the 20+ stoplights on Main Street in Keokuk years ago, but once you hit a green you'd hit greens all the way through if you kept your speed at 25. On the other hand, Fort Madison, which was about the same size but had fewer lights, was a nightmare to drive through because you'd inevitably hit a red at every other light no matter what.

[atler8]

I'm dating myself but I remember an occasion way on back in time when I was a very young kid & we drove through Ankeny on the way to Des Moines on U.S. 69 before there was any interstate parallel to the east of it.
Ankeny was so tiny that I don't believe that it had a single traffic light on that highway & it's main retail area was off on a side street and about a block long.
As Jerry Mathers said more than once on "Leave It to Beaver", "Who woulda thunk?"

[duster1979]

Not all that long ago, probably early 2000, I worked for CarQuest Auto Parts and would have to travel to the distribution center on SE Delaware periodically for training and meetings. The hotel the company used was the Best Western at the corner of Delaware and First. Back then about the only things in between were Karl Chevrolet, Casey's, Menards, and a bunch of farms. I think there may have been a boat or RV place in there somewhere. The next time I went to Ankeny was when I started transferred to Menards in the summer of 2006. It was quite a shock to see that all that empty space had been developed in that relatively short period of time.