The Kyle Report

The Kyle Report

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Council voices approval of costly, controversial roundabout

In spite of its $600,000 price tag and the overwhelming opposition to it by residents, particularly those who live close by, the City Council Tuesday evening directed the staff to prepare a resolution that would put the city on record as supporting the construction of a roundabout at Kyle Parkway and Kohlers Crossing.

Of course, last night’s action doesn’t mean squat. It has absolutely no bearing on whether a roundabout will ever be constructed at the intersection. All it means, if the resolution drafted by the staff is ultimately passed by the council, is that the city will be on record as telling the Texas Department of Transportation it favors installing a roundabout at the location.

The council’s direction to staff came without an official vote, just a mention by Mayor Todd Webster that he felt the consensus of the council leaned to favoring a roundabout.

According to Assistant City Manager James Earp, TxDOT is willing to foot the bill ($250,000, according to Earp) to install a traffic signal at that intersection. He estimated a roundabout would cost about $850,000, but he also guessed TxDOT would contribute the $250,000 traffic light cost to the project, leaving the city to come up with the remaining $600,000. This came a couple of hours before the council hosted a workshop in which council members were told it would cost the city $18 million a year over the next 30 years to pay for the road projects called for in its Transportation Master Plan.

Of course those are capital projects and would be paid for by putting the city more in debt. Because of extremely poor planning, Kyle already has the highest property tax rate of any city in Hays County and I’m guessing that rate will jump about three cents when the city manager unveils his FY 2015-16 budget next week. The problem is, because of that poor planning, the burden of paying that debt falls way too heavily on individual homeowners and asking them to shoulder more of that responsibility is absolutely unconscionable. The city needs to attract far more businesses to relieve homeowners of some of this taxpaying burden before it goes on these types of spending sprees.

Not only that, while I am a big fan of roundabouts in general, I am not convinced that a roundabout at that intersection is the best idea.

Earp is also a big fan of roundabouts, but he is one of those city officials who say that since a particular solution solved a particular problem a number of different times, that same solution will work every time. That can be a dangerous assumption, especially when it comes to city planning. Earp presented a nifty slide show illustrating the benefits, particularly the safety benefits, of roundabouts, but not one of those slides, not a single one of his examples, was illustrative of the situation at Kyle Parkway and Kohlers Crossing.

For one thing, the speed limit on that section of Kyle Parkway is 60 miles an hour and I’ve never seen a roundabout on a stretch of highway where the speed limit is 60 miles an hour. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one somewhere on this planet, but I doubt if there is one at an intersection that closely resembles the configuration at Kyle Parkway at Kohlers. Usually roundabouts are found at intersections that closely mirror each other; i.e. a four-lane undivided road that intersects another four-lane undivided road, a 40-mile-an-hour road that intersects another 40-mile-an hour road. Here, however, you have a four-lane road with a significant median intersecting a four-lane road with a narrower median and a road with a 60-mile-an hour speed limit intersecting one with marked at 45 mph.

Earp offered a slide that indicated studies suggest that a car traveling a 60 miles an hour will slow to under 20 miles an hour at a roundabout. But that study was done on a two-lane road and I doubt if it was done in Texas where drivers will hope the road ices over in winter so they can slide their pickups all around the circle at crazy speeds. And why create an obstacle on a 60-mile-an-hour highway that slows vehicles to under 20 mph? That makes no sense. Why not construct an overpass at the location to really keep traffic flowing along Kyle Parkway? Would an overpass cost significantly more than a roundabout? There is no way of knowing because, in typical fashion, instead of trying to find the best solution to a particular problem, Kyle officials only considered two alternatives: traffic light or roundabout. But it seems to me an overpass would be the best traffic-management solution.

But we’ll never know that because, again in typical Kyle poor planning mode, the city waited until the last minute to take any action at all on this. According to Earp, TxDot needs to have an answer from the city on the plans for this intersection by the end of this month or sometime next month at the absolute latest.

There is also the fact, as mentioned Tuesday night by both Mayor Pro Tem David Wilson and council member Diane Hervol, that the majority of Kyle residents don’t want a roundabout at that particular location. And if the internet message boards hosted by Plum Creek residents are any indication, those individuals who live closest to the intersection are overwhelmingly against it. Now, none of those residents came to City Hall Tuesday night; the only ones who did appear were those who favored roundabouts, including two members of the Planning & Zoning Commission, Mike Wilson and Dan Ryan. But even these two gentlemen spoke in favor of the theory of roundabouts, but never addressed the actual situation at Kyle Parkway and Kohlers.

As far as the cost, Earp justified the $600,000 cost of the roundabout by saying the city would have to bear the cost of maintaining the traffic signal which would be higher than maintaining a roundabout. Council member Damon Fogley asked the perfectly logical question of how long would it take for the traffic light maintenance costs to reach the $600,000 expense of the roundabout and Earp responded with a tapdance that would have made Fred Astaire jealous.

There are plenty of potentially good locations for roundabouts in the Kyle area: at the intersections of Center and Rebel, Center and Old Stagecoach Road, RR 150 and 2770. And someone please explain to me why a roundabout should be located at Kyle Parkway and Kohlers, but not at Kyle Parkway and 2770, which is really the official city portal on the parkway. The answer. of course, is because the parkway shrinks from a four-lane, widely divided road to a two-lane undivided one north of 2770, but, as I mentioned earlier, you also have a road mismatch at the Parkway and Kohlers.

This just seems to be another example of doing something not because it’s the right thing to do, but because the fix is in.

1 comment:

  1. As you have no doubt seen, here is my letter to Council on this issue.

    And no, I could not be at the meeting, nor can can I claim that I would have been under different circumstances. Allergies.

    The unofficial (apparently) story is that Plum Creek Developers have promised to pay the $600K, but city staff not vouching that proposal causes me concern (as do the almost mythical underground pedestrian passages at that intersection).

    Mayor and Honorable Elected Representatives,

    I am contacting you regarding my concerns over the proposed Traffic Circle/Roundabout interchange at RM 1626 and Kohler’s Crossing. My specific urgent concerns are:

    The lack of a comprehensive traffic study for that intersection, one that reflects both future trip generators (ACC, and mixed-use development) and current short-term traffic peaks (both the Hays Stadium and Performing Arts Center traffic), the heavy use of that intersection by commercial gravel-haulers coming from and to the Buda Centex facility, and the potential for cut-through traffic in Plum Creek and by-pass traffic on 150 through downtown Kyle by motorists wishing to avoid the roundabout,

    The lack of traffic counts that measure peak load occurrences (i.e., Hays vs. Lehman football games), but rely instead on relatively low-volume time period counts,

    The 60+ mph approaching speed limits on RM 1626 combined with 45+ speeds on Kohler’s Crossing. 50 mph is the maximum American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recommended approach speed I have seen, with the recommended roundabout approach speeds usually from 25 to 35 mph,

    The sight-line obstructions blocking the interchange and general topography, specifically the less than 250 feet of interchange visibility (200’ to 500’ less than the AASHTO recommended distance) west bound on Kohler’s Crossing, and the hidden nature (obscured by the crest of the hill) of the interchange north bound on 1626, both of which (combined with higher approach speeds than are normally associated with roundabouts) impact motorist reaction time,

    The pedestrian safety and access, both near-term and long-term (some studies conclude that pedestrian injuries decrease in traffic circles because pedestrians simply avoid the intersections), and disabled/ADA access between Hays Performance Center, new mixed-use residential, potential rail station, and the Kyle ACC campus. Daily I see a visual reminder at that intersection of a pedestrian fatality, and I don’t understand why we would want to make it less safe,

    While most studies show that roundabouts and traffic circles are more efficient at traffic throughput than a square 4-way intersection, the studies I have seen that demonstrate the greatest advantage to roundabouts are ones that do not include the efficiency multiplying left-turn pockets and free right-turn lanes at the 4-way intersections… as are present at Kohler’s Crossing and 1626.

    None of these concerns were satisfactorily addressed at the 2013 public meetings with TxDOT (including a comment from the City of Austin’s traffic engineer – who has no actual experience building roundabouts – that he was not concerned about the approach speeds and sight obstructions… an odd response from a traffic engineer), and it is my strong belief that there has not been a comprehensive approach to this potentially ill-conceived project. The possibility exists that this is indeed a round peg being hammered into a square hole.

    While I have great respect for TxDOT and the FHWA, I have worked enough with both agencies over the last 25 years to realize that things are never quite as wonderful as their projections are, especially when decisions are based more on fashionable political considerations than on best-case solutions.

    I also have to admit to being concerned that a design that faced overwhelming opposition two years ago following public meetings, has now been quietly brought back by City staff for approval by a newly constituted city council.

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