Letter: Spending thousands on one Second Avenue roundabout is simply foolish

I am writing to comment on the issue of traffic roundabouts on which Mr. John Lindsay purports to be a self proclaimed expert.

It may be true that roundabouts move vehicles more quickly, but where and for how long?

A few seconds may be cut from the time it takes the vehicles to get to the next traffic light or stop sign.

That’s where and for how long. Spending thousands of dollars on one Second Avenue roundabout to this end is simply foolish.

Most likely private property would have to be expropriated to build even a single lane roundabout adding more thousands to the cost.

Four-way stops and traffic lights are a much cheaper and easier solution to most traffic flow problems.

Here are a couple of examples of roundabouts with which I am familiar. The first was on a busy intersection on the campus of Michigan State University, my American alma mater.

It was as well designed, signed and engineered as a roundabout could possibly be.

But after 50 years, they tore it out and replaced it with a traditional traffic signal.

For the better part of two years, I had to cross the street at that roundabout when going to and from my residence to the business school.
It was neither pedestrian friendly nor safe.

The second example is in Dartmouth, N.S.

We have family there and have visited them frequently over the years. For a long time, there was a roundabout on one of that city’s busiest intersections. It was accident central, and, it too, had to be replaced — at great cost — with a set of traffic signals.

Ask anyone who drives through the town of Mattawa where a roundabout was constructed and reconstructed at the point where Highway 17 takes an abrupt 90-degree turn.

It’s hard enough for a driver of a small automobile to navigate it; to say nothing of large trucks or emergency or snow removal vehicles.

Perhaps the community is getting tired of John Lindsay and his handful of camp followers and their single-minded crusade to delay long overdue repairs to Second Avenue.

William E. McLeod
Greater Sudbury