Round and Round with a Roundabout

By Marjorie Smith, 12-13-05

For a few hours last week I felt we might be living in Camelot where everything has a happy ending. We didn't have a Round Table, but it looked like we might get a roundabout and that it would be the best of all possible solutions to one of the most vexing traffic problems created by our prosperity-inducing growth.

After a two hour discussion about improving safety at the intersection of South Willson Avenue and West College Street, in the heart of Bozeman's most elegant historical district, the commission voted 4 to 1 to ask the Montana Department of Transportation (M-DOT) to look into rights-of-way and construction costs for a roundabout at the intersection, with a traffic light as a backup plan. Commissioner Jeff Krauss voted against the motion; while he favors a roundabout, he’s adamantly opposed to a traffic signal.

"I don't want to do anything that cuts off our other major historic district, the downtown," he said. He believes if traffic has to stop dead for a light at College, many people will head for the big box stores and shopping centers on North 19th instead of going downtown.

Three weeks earlier, when the commission asked M-DOT to look into the
possibility, a roundabout looked like a wistful dream. Commissioner Marcia Youngman did note that the city currently owns the property on the southwest corner of the intersection -- the Story Mansion -- so could help out with the right-of-way. At that time, Wade Pannell, who owns the large brick home on the northwest corner of the intersection indicated that he’d be so delighted to get rid of the threat of a traffic light that he'd probably cut the city a deal on right-of-way on his corner.

On December 5, M-DOT traffic planner Roy Peterson presented a sketched design for a roundabout and told the astonished commissioners that he considered a roundabout the best option. Back in November, M-DOT had told Bozeman leaders in no uncertain terms that it was time to fish or cut bait.

There are federal funds available for the traffic signal and if Bozeman
doesn't want it, there are plenty of other dangerous intersections around
the state that could use the money. Seemingly without enthusiasm, the M-DOT people had agreed to check into a roundabout.

"I thought we'd come in tonight and it would take about one minute to learn that a roundabout was impossible," said Commissioner Steve Kirchhoff. "Now you've opened up all sorts of possibilities."

It turns out that Roy Peterson recently attended a workshop on roundabouts put on by the Western Transportation Institute at MSU. He learned that in many situations, roundabouts are safer than traffic signals. They also have the traffic calming effect that the neighborhood activists -- who've been up in arms against the proposed traffic signal -- are hoping for.

At the November meeting Jeff Krauss summed the dilemma up: "Willson works. College doesn’t." Traffic on Willson -- the main north-south artery running through central Bozeman -- has increased exponentially thanks to burgeoning subdivisions which now stretch south clear to the mountains. The worst accidents at the intersection happen when folks on College grow weary of waiting for a break in the constant Willson traffic and dive into too small a gap. The transportation people have a vivid term for what happens all too frequently: the car trying to cross traffic or make a left turn gets "T-boned."

The situation at the intersection is complicated by what exists on the east side of Willson. On one corner is the Sigma Chi fraternity house, which means a number of young men trying to find parking spaces in the neighborhood, and needing to get across Willson to head for campus, located a few blocks to the west.

On the southeast corner, a large home is also the Children’s Development
Center, a preschool that's been in operation at the site for 30 years. Proprietor Joanne Jensen told the commission any of the proposed changes at the intersection will ruin the school.

The M-DOT folks looked ill-prepared at the first public hearing in November when it became clear that their original design for a traffic signal had not taken the preschool into account. "It's our ignorance," Peterson said then.

"We didn't understand what was going on there." On Monday, he said that he thought there would still be room for the preschool's loading zone on
College with a roundabout but the large semi-truck that delivers food to the fraternity could no longer make the turn off Willson. Although the
roundabout can accommodate large trucks continuing on in the same direction, they won't be able to make right angle turns. School buses, however, will fit in the roundabout which will have a 100 foot diameter. And Peterson says the research shows that pedestrian safety is the same with a roundabout as with traffic signals.

Marcia Youngman asked about bicycle safety. Peterson had no statistics on that but Krauss, a cyclist himself, said if cyclists don’t want to behave
like vehicles and join them in the circle, they have the option of walking
across in the pedestrian crosswalks which are set back about 25 feet from the circle itself.

Peterson acknowledged that initial costs for the roundabout would be greater than installing traffic signals, because extensive curbs must be built and rights-of-way acquired. But he agreed with City Manager Chris Kukulski, a longtime proponent of roundabouts, that a roundabout would be significantly less expensive to maintain through the years as traffic signals demand constant maintenance.

Youngman asked the M-DOT folks if it was true that Missoula had built
several roundabouts recently and was asking for more. The state officials
confirmed Missoula's preference, saying the choice is based on safety and
aesthetic grounds.

From the time I first heard a roundabout proposed I've been visualizing it there at the core of the historic district. Landscaping will enhance the view just as a traffic signal would detract from it. People will have to stop bombing down Willson at 35 or 40 miles per hour at low traffic times.

They'll slow to 15, according to Roy Peterson, to go round the roundabout.

The next morning I was reminded that I was living in Bozeman, not Camelot. The folks on the call-in shows on commercial radio the next morning couldn't wait to rehash Bozeman's one earlier, disastrous experiment with a roundabout, on a major artery in a new subdivision on the western edge of town. (Throughout the meeting the commissioners kept reminding each other, "If we do it, we've go to do it right this time." Apparently the earlier roundabout had not been well designed.)

So the radio chat hosts and their callers had a grand time calling the city commissioners various derisive names. Not that any of them had bothered to go to the meeting and see the sketched plans for the Willson roundabout or listen to the reasons people object to a traffic signal at the intersection.

A traffic light was the only solution from the radio studio's windowless
vantage point. 

I hope the commissioners keep their nerve in the face of the ridicule. But
in Bozeman, the posse rides in to shoot new ideas down before they’ve even seen the whites of their eyes. Twenty years ago, with his tongue in cheek, my father proposed an official flag for Bozeman: It would have a picture of a large, lassoed horse labeled "Progress" struggling to move ahead as a cowpoke labeled "Bozeman" frantically tried to drag it back.

So, I guess we’ll see. Meanwhile, drive carefully, especially at Willson and
College.


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