Double-lane roundabout up for Columbia City Council debate

Another roundabout is up for debate during the Columbia City Council meeting Tuesday night.

The council will hold a public hearing on intersection improvements at Green Meadows Road and Forum Boulevard at City Hall starting at 7 p.m. Among the options are a double-lane roundabout and traffic light, aimed at moving traffic through the south Columbia intersection quicker. The city budgeted $610,000 for the project, raised through a quarter-cent capital improvement sales tax voters approved in August 2015.

City staff hopes to eventually expand Nifong Boulevard, a major east-west street in the south part of town. Expecting traffic to detour around the work zones there, the city wants to build the roundabout to cut down on existing, and potential, delays at Green Meadows and Forum four-way stop. The former is a two-lane street running east to west, while the latter is a four-lane road separated by a grass median. Staff said in a prepared report that the current configuration causes “bottlenecks” at the busiest times of day, and can be unsafe as drivers go out of turn at the four-way stop.

The council heard some opposition to the project in June. Tim Vicente presented more than 100 signatures of people in the nearby Country Club Villas neighborhood and customers of the Green Meadows Preschool who didn’t want a roundabout. Vicente said the older residents of the subdivision were “petrified” at the idea of handling a double-lane roundabout, and feared drivers focusing on making it through would not pay close attention to pedestrians or bicyclists.

“We’re going to spend $600,000 to solve a traffic problem that goes from 4:45 to 5:45, five days a week,” Vicente told the council in June. “There has got to be a better way to spend our money than this.”

Traffic data the city put together in January shows that 14,772 cars went through the intersection from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The “peak hour” of 4:45 to 5:45 p.m. logged 1,754 cars, most heading south on Forum Blvd. The average “delay” for a car was 46 seconds. Police crash reports detailed 13 “significant” crashes that dealt either serious damage to cars, or physical injuries from 2011 to 2015. Just three of those 13 injured people involved.

Janet Epperson, a Country Club Villa resident, told ABC 17 News she supported a roundabout. While both she and her husband are retired, she doesn’t use the intersection at “peak” times, but she felt roundabouts moved traffic more efficiently and safely than the current four-way stop.

“The drivers themselves kind of control traffic through a roundabout,” Epperson said Monday afternoon. “And I just think it’s a good way to keep it flowing, but slowing it down enough so that accidents are not likely to happen.”

“I don’t feel they’re a license to just keep going as fast as I was before I entered the roundabout,” she added.

Epperson said her main concern, though, was its proximity to the preschool, which is on the southwest corner of the intersection. The limited parking there often drives parents to park on Green Meadows, and Epperson feared traffic exiting the roundabout would conflict with pick-up times of the children.

The owner of the preschool wrote a letter to the city in support of the roundabout, but laid out several concerns with the scope of the roundabout. The project as laid out would hamper the business’ ability to provide more parking and classrooms, Debra Renz wrote, and wanted to work further to find a solution.

Only one other double-lane roundabout similar to this plan exists in Columbia. MoDOT installed one at Business Loop 70 and Interstate 70 this year. The state put in a “wishbone” roundabout at Rangeline and I-70, and is constructing a double-lane roundabout at Highway WW and Rolling Hills Road.