Trying to label Kyle as “the pie capital of Texas” is nothing more than an exercise in commercialism designed to promote the fortunes of one local eatery — albeit one whose reputation does, indeed, extend beyond the city’s borders — but if city engineers have their way, Kyle may soon earn the reputation as “the roundabout capital of Texas.” Now, when it comes to roundabouts, Kyle will never rival Carmel, Ind., but, as far as I can see, no other city in the Lone Star State has invested itself in the planned application of roundabouts more than Kyle.
This phenomenon is largely associated with the Plum Creek neighborhood, although what most people call roundabouts in Plum Creek are actually traffic circles. There is a significant difference.
The first major push for an actual roundabout in the city came when city officials lobbied the Texas Department of Transportation to install a roundabout at the intersection of FM 1626 and Kohlers Crossing. This was one of the dumbest ideas of the century. The speed limit there was 60 miles an hour and, as any civic engineer can attest, a roundabout capable of handling motorized vehicles traveling 60 mph would have to have, at a minimum, a diameter of at least a mile. TxDOT, of course, has more than enough knowledgeable civic engineers and I can imagine them chuckling to themselves as they quickly installed traffic signals, not the roundabout city officials so desperately sought, at that intersection.
But the city did manage to install a roundabout at Marketplace and Burleson (although it, too, is configured more like a traffic circle than a roundabout), as part of the last road bond project, and it has been successful in forcing developers to include roundabouts as part of new subdivisions on the east side of the city as well.
Now, however, the City is going even further. It is trying to institutionalize roundabouts.
The first step in this process will come tomorrow night when the City Council considers a rather messy and somewhat convoluted ordinance “requiring (the) use of roundabouts in certain intersections.”
Now the question you may have — certainly the one I had — is precisely in what kind of intersections will the City require that roundabouts be installed. That’s where the messy and convoluted part comes into play. This is what the ordinance, as currently written, says about that subject: “A traffic control study to consider the potential positive impact of a roundabout style intersection is required for all non-residential construction of intersections with anticipated traffic requiring traffic control measures great than a stop-sign. When studies indicated both feasibility and a positive impact on traffic congestion, a roundabout style intersection will be used unless the exclusion of which is specifically approved by the City.”
Sure. Fine. Whatever.
It’s difficult to know exactly where to begin in trying to decipher the gobbledygook contained in the proposed ordinance. One can make assumptions, of course. Assumption No. 1: The City doesn’t employ anyone assigned to proofread proposed ordinances, which directly leads to Assumption No. 2: the word “great” in that section of the ordinance should actually be “greater.” Of course, that begs the question “What constitutes ‘anticipated traffic requiring traffic control measures greater than a stop-sign’” and what in heaven's name does any of that even mean?
(Updated at 4:50 p.m. Tuesday) “The proposed ordinance will provide the City with the responsibility/ authority to determine if a roundabout is best suited at an intersection in lieu of multi-way stop signs or traffic signals,” City Engineer Leon Barba told me Tuesday. “There are no specific numbers, ratios or formulas to help make this determination. It will be based on the 'engineer’s judgment' to make this call.” Of course, you might be wondering, as I am, why the ordinance just didn't say this, which brings me to:(End updated material)
Assumption No. 3: the City has no one in its employ with the specific expertise of writing municipal ordinances. Kyle currently contracts out its legal services, but it is rapidly approaching the size when it needs to establish its own in-house City Attorney Department. San Marcos, for example, has its own in-house City Attorney although I am still trying to determine if that office also contains a staff of lawyers in addition to City Attorney Michael Cosentino. Further south, the San Antonio City Attorney’s Office contains 58 attorneys and a support staff of 25. To the north, Austin labels its City Attorney Department as “the Law Department,” which, according to its web page, “is organized into seven legal practice divisions. Although the department's attorneys are assigned to practice in a specific division, they are trained to have a general knowledge of municipal law practice because many legal issues cross practice areas. The Law Department has a diverse staff of talented professionals with the expertise to provide comprehensive legal services for the wide variety of legal issues facing our city.” Assumption No. 4: At least one person on that staff and on the staff in San Antonio is solely responsible for drafting municipal ordinances. I make that assumption because, during my time as a department head with the City of Dallas, I was good friends with the one attorney in the Dallas City Attorney Department whose sole responsibility was drafting municipal ordinances for that City Council to review and possibly adopt.
I’m not saying Kyle has reached the point where it needs to bring its legal services in-house, but I do believe the City can see that point from here. I am saying, however, the city must do a better job in drafting municipal ordinances, whether that involves having them drafted by an ordinance-drafting expert at The Knight Law Firm, LLP, which currently serves as the city’s legal arm, or whether it involves searching for a replacement for Knight that has, in its employ, experts in that field.
At any rate, this ordinance, as messy and as convoluted as it may be, does indicate the City is diving headfirst into the roundabout pool. Does it mean the City plans to replace all intersections on which traffic is currently controlled by lights with roundabouts? Since the majority of those roads are most likely under the jurisdiction of TxDOT, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. In addition, performing such an exercise immediately would seem to be cost prohibitive, but this new emphasis on roundabouts could mean the city plans to accomplish this replacement process in phases over an extended period of time, say two decades. I say two decades because the aforementioned Carmel, Ind., began the process in the late 1990s to build and replace signalized intersections with roundabouts. At the time it began that process, Carmel had a population of 60,803, roughly what Kyle’s population is now. Today, that Indiana city, with a population of 97,464, has more than 138 roundabouts, more than any other city in the United States.
Is this a good thing for Kyle, or simply an expensive gimmick? Perhaps something I discovered on Carmel’s web page could help answer that question: “Roundabouts move traffic more efficiently and reduce the number of fatalities and serious-injury accidents. They work because of their safety record, their compatibility with the environment, their aesthetics and their ability to make it easier for pedestrians and bicyclists to navigate. The number of injury accidents in Carmel have reduced by about 80 percent and the number of accidents overall by about 40 percent.”
But there is a cost factor. Roundabout intersections are more expensive to construct that signalized ones because of the realignment involved. Most engineers I have talked to estimate it costs roughly $400,000 more to construct a roundabout intersection than a signalized one. Then there’s the annual maintenance costs. Those same engineers tell me the annual maintenance on a signalized intersection is roughly between $4,000 and $5,000, while the annual maintenance on a roundabout — landscaping and additional asphalt applications — is significantly higher. A study performed by the city of Sudbury, Calif., concluded “it is estimated that a roundabout will cost approximately $500,000 more than a signalized intersection.”
But those roundabouts are prettier than a traffic light, that's for sure.
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