Design Excellence: Roundabouts
In reaction to the rapid growth communities are experiencing, many are implementing traffic solutions such as modern roundabouts, which help to ease congestion and greatly improve intersection safety. Some municipalities utilize the modern roundabout in initiatives such as Vision Zero, a collaborative campaign helping communities reach their goals of eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries — while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.
So, why choose roundabouts? Roundabouts can be less costly than traditional signalized intersections over their life-cycle. With Roundabouts, cities can manage high-volume traffic with less operational costs and maintenance. Additional positives include the reduced tendency of high-impact collisions and prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists. While serving a functional purpose for the city, roundabouts may also serve as decorative landmarks in the surrounding community. Monuments, plantings, and other items complement public design and overall aesthetics.
Roundabout projects are designed in tandem with our traffic engineers to ensure that both present and future traffic will make efficient use of intersections. Other nearby traffic roadways and designs are taken into consideration along with traffic studies to make the best decisions for the area including traffic capacity, delay, level of service and effectiveness.
To ensure that the right decisions are made, processes such as these require input from the community. One such community is the city of Keller, which is seeking to add roundabouts to areas that encounter prominent traffic problems at the intersection of Johnson and Keller-Smithfield Road. In this ongoing project, Dunaway assisted the city of Keller with a public meeting, in which residents were able to ask questions and voice their concerns. Utilizing citizens’ feedback as a guideline, our team of civil engineers and landscape architects presented conceptual layouts, showcasing how the area’s traffic would be improved.
At Dunaway, our goal is to deliver our high level of expertise and ability with every project we encounter — using several disciplines to achieve the project vision. Dunaway is proud to utilize modern roundabouts in our work with cities all over Texas to give those communities a better, and more importantly, safer traffic experience.