Seems our highway engineers want us to drive around in circles. If so, we’re going to need a lot of practice navigating the traffic flow.
The number of roundabouts will be growing, actually doubling, the Lake County Department of Transportation says in seeking input from motorists on plans to grow the number of roundabouts from the current nine. For the uninitiated, these traffic circles are non-signal intersections in which traffic flows in a circular, counterclockwise pattern around a landscaped raised island.
Drivers mainly hate them. Traffic planners love to include them in their intersection proposals.
Before installing more roundabouts, which can cost up to $15 million, Lake County needs wider roads. Stearns School Road in Gurnee, west from Route 41 to Hutchins Road in Grandwood Park and beyond, is but one example.
There are plenty of others under county control. A number of state roads, like Route 173 between Zion and Antioch, and Route 22 between Lake Zurich and Highland Park, cry to be widened.
Work on intersection improvements, including lane widening, at Route 41 and Stearns School Road looks to be nearly complete for this construction season. Yet, a multi-lane roundabout is planned for Hunt Club and Stearns School roads near Gurnee, a mile or so from Route 41, according to a front-page News-Sun story earlier this month by reporter Joseph States.
Completion is anticipated for 2027 and is part of $17 million worth of road work recently approved by the County Board. Traffic signals and turn lanes now control the flow of vehicles to the intersection of Hunt Club and Stearns School, which certainly needs four lanes.
I’d hate to be navigating that proposed roundabout on a Black Friday, as shoppers move around hoping to get to Gurnee Mills, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart and the Grand-Hunt corridor. Or during the Christmas shopping rush in the same Gurnee locations.
Traffic currently backs up on Stearns School Road most days during rush hours as drivers use the county road as an alternate to avoid the heavy daily usage on Grand Avenue. Highway engineers say roundabouts will ease road congestion, and are safer than regular intersections.
Hearing “roundabout” always triggers an earworm from the 1970s song “Roundabout” by the progressive rock group, Yes. Supposedly, the lyrics are about driving through some 40 roundabouts the band encountered during an early tour of Great Britain, which was the first nation to endorse a “yield-at-entry” roundabout in 1956.
Or, it reminds me of the tense meet-ups with traffic circles, or rotaries as they like to call them in Massachusetts and other New England communities, during a morning rush in Boston. It was not pleasant.
During our daily travels, many of us have driven around roundabouts, which traffic engineers maintain to shave time off of commuting. There are two on Hunt Club Road, at Millburn Road and Wadsworth Road; another at Wadsworth and Dilley’s Road. Gurnee had a miniscule one in a cut-through neighborhood off Route 41, at Grandville Avenue and Ferndale Street, for a few years, but later dismantled it as no one appeared to pay it much attention.
If you drive a lot in Wisconsin, you’ll encounter roundabouts in many towns, like Oshkosh, Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Sturgeon Bay. America’s Dairyland has 587 roundabouts — 305 are on state highways and 282 are on local roads, the most in the Midwest, according to WisDOT.
Las Vegas was the first U.S. city to sanction roundabouts in 1990. In Seattle, the city has installed more than 1,200 traffic circles, primarily in residential neighborhoods. In some Orlando, Florida areas, traffic circles are prevalent.
Roundabouts have been popular in Europe for decades, but then again, so has lukewarm beer. With high gas prices, European traffic planners use roundabouts or as some countries dub them, “traffic-calming circles,” to provide a green booster as traffic flow reportedly moves with fewer vehicles idling in traffic, yielding lower fuel emissions and less wasted fuel.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, roundabouts make violent and deadly T-bone and head-on crashes from running red lights unlikely due to speed reductions. The actuaries say if wrecks happen, they tend to be minor.
But then there are the other arguments against roundabouts. They are confusing, especially for older drivers, and motorists take some time getting used to them. Entering one at high speed can be dangerous. More traffic entering a roundabout can cause a greater risk of vehicle wrecks.
For LakeDOT officials, the pros outweigh the cons. That means roundabouts will mushroom as the engineers look to plop them into likely intersections to allay road congestion, drop operational costs and in their views make driving safer.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
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