An open house on a traffic study affecting the Knoxville area is designed to be informal, and to give members of the public access to the people and information they’re looking for…as well as the chance to contribute their own suggestions.

The Knoxville Area Transportation Location Study is hosting the open house next Wednesday from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at the Marion County Public Health Department’s training room. Instead of a formal presentation, visitors will be invited to see exhibits and talk to county officials and traffic experts about the driving patterns between Knoxville and Pella.

Tyler Christian is the Marion County road engineer; he tells KNIA/KRLS News they want to hear what the public has to say, because the study’s goal is to find or create more efficient routes between the two cities…and they need input from the people who drive there.

“We found that there was no good route, no one route that anyone was taking; all of them had their own challenges as far as unsafe intersections or curves with high crash rates,” Christian says.

“None of them were able to kind of maintain a 55 mile an hour speed due to the traffic volume, and traffic volumes are increasing every year; so there was definitely a need to do some long-term planning.”

The Central Iowa Regional Transportation Planning Alliance is joining with the county and the cities of Knoxville and Pella in this study.

Christian says information gathered from this event, and from the study in general, will be incorporated into some projects Marion County is already considering.