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Traffic is flowing more smoothly through a section of Bountiful this afternoon, and there are a lot of smiles about that. Construction began three months ago on the Five Points roundabout project.
Motorists and businesses alike were looking forward to this day. For years, the intersection, located at 1500 S. and Main St., was cumbersome to say the least: a stop sign on each of the five corners. A four-way stop is bad enough, but add an extra one, and things could get interesting.
"It's such an awkward place to get in and out of, so we thought: Why don't we change this? It's been about a seven-year project, though," Bountiful Mayor Joe Johnson said.
Assistant city engineer Lloyd Cheney said, "We called it ‘the game of chicken.' That's really what it was. People had a hard time anticipating whose turn it was; and the roundabout will take care of that."
The city decided to turn the roundabout opening into a party. Businesses had free snacks and drinks and a couple hundred residents came out to watch the mayor and other city officials cut the ribbons -- they had five stretched across all five streets connected to the roundabout.
Vintage cars, fire trucks and police cars with lights and sirens were the first to make the circle.
The project presented a few challenges in that it was a retrofit of an existing intersection. "You don't have everything coming in at the same point, and so trying to size the roundabout so it would fit into the available area that we had," Cheney said.
Roundabouts, very common throughout Europe, are showing up more and more in the United States. Since 1990, 1,500 have been built in this country.
The intersections are gaining popularity in Utah too. Draper has one. So does Lehi, Orem, Park City and St. George. There are also more in the planning stages.
Bill Baranowski is a traffic engineer who lives in Holladay. He's designed 90 roundabouts in the U.S. He also has a Web site dedicated to these projects: RoundaboutsUSA.com.
"Roundabouts are safer than a traffic signal, mainly because the speeds are lower. You're not allowed to drive 50 miles per hour through the intersection. You really have to slow down based on the geometry," Baranowski said.
The new Bountiful roundabout was paid for almost entirely with federal funds -- about $444,000. Baranowski says West Valley and Weber State also have roundabout projects under construction.
E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
