Four more roundabouts planned for Kyle’s east side

The city has negotiated a road extension contract that will ultimately result in four additional roundabouts on the city’s east side.

The contract would extend Lehman Road north from its present terminus at Bunton Creek and then west so it would ultimately connect to Dacy Lane at the intersection of Seton Parkway. It would also involve extending Kyle Parkway east to that extended Lehman Road.

The plan calls for roundabouts at the intersections of Kyle Parkway and Dacy Lane, Lehman and Bunton Creek, Lehman and Kyle Parkway and Lehman and Dacy Lane.

About roundabouts

In Arizona there is this company called Footework that has, since its beginning in 1998, provided one-stop shopping for motor vehicle registration, titles, drivers licenses, etc. The company boasts that it “provides faster, friendlier services with shorter wait times. For a nominal convenience fee, you’ll leave our offices with a new driver license, vehicle title, registration or license plate in as little as 10 minutes.”

Footework also has its own blog and I discovered this information on that blog on the subject of roundabouts. And since our very own city council is on the precipice of adopting tonight an ordinance that would emphasize and promote the construction of roundabouts here in Kyle, I thought it might be informative to pass this information along.

Benefits of Roundabouts

According to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS), there are many safety benefits associated with the modern roundabout:

• 90 percent reduction in fatal crashes
• 75 percent reduction in injury crashes
• 30 to 40 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes
• 10 percent reduction in bicycle crashes
• 30 to 50 percent increase in traffic capacity

There other benefits to roundabouts, including:

• Reduction in fuel use and pollution
• No signal equipment to install and repair
• Quieter neighborhoods

Cost of Roundabouts Versus Signals

The price tag of modern roundabouts versus traditional traffic-control methods can vary. Demographics, geography and environmental elements all make a difference when engineers, communities, and city and state planners begin to consider how to move traffic from one street to another.

Sometimes the financial cost of right-of-way acquisition is higher than the cost of traffic signal construction, and sometimes it is not a factor. For example, though modern roundabouts do not require traffic-light electricity, the maintenance of landscaping or public art can be a cost. However, the reduction in fatal, injury and pedestrian crashes can reduce other costs, including car insurance premiums, health insurance premiums, and physical and emotional trauma. When safety factors go up, the cost to society goes down.

History Of Roundabouts

Traffic circles have been part of the transportation system in the United States since 1905, when the Columbus Circle designed by William Phelps Eno opened in New York City. Subsequently, many large circles or rotaries were built in the United States. The prevailing designs enabled high-speed merging and weaving of vehicles. Priority was given to entering vehicles, facilitating high-speed entries. High crash experience and congestion in the circles led to rotaries falling out of favor in America after the mid-1950s. Internationally, the experience with traffic circles was equally negative, with many countries experiencing circles that locked up as traffic volumes increased.

The modern roundabout was developed in the United Kingdom to rectify problems associated with these traffic circles. In 1966, the United Kingdom adopted a mandatory “give-way” rule at all circular intersections, which required entering traffic to give way, or yield, to circulating traffic. This rule prevented circular intersections from locking up, by not allowing vehicles to enter the intersection until there were sufficient gaps in circulating traffic. In addition, smaller circular intersections were proposed that required adequate horizontal curvature of vehicle paths to achieve slower entry and circulating speeds.

These changes improved the safety characteristics of the circular intersections by reducing the number and particularly the severity of collisions. Thus, the resultant modern roundabout is significantly different from the older style traffic circle both in how it operates and in how it is designed. The modern roundabout represents a substantial improvement, in terms of operations and safety, when compared with older rotaries and traffic circles.

“Obsessed” mayor leads council approval of roundabout ordinance

Mayor Travis Mitchell admitted he’s so “obsessed” with roundabouts that he has flown drones in order to videotape and then study them. Council member Yvonne-Flores Cale claimed to be a roundabout convert and her fellow council member Robert Rizo said he’s “leaning” that way. Their colleague, Michael Tobias, confessed he doesn’t like ‘em and he never will. And, when all was said and done, the city council voted 6-1 Tuesday to approve on first reading an ordinance that will (1) make roundabouts more prolific in the city and (2) give the city’s staff more control over roundabouts installed by developers.

And in case anyone on the near west side of the Interstate is listening, City Engineer Leon Barba said officially during the council’s roundabout discussion that too many obstacles exist to build a rumored roundabout at the Burleson-Spring Branch intersection and that, instead, traffic signals likely will be installed there.

“This (ordinance) will allow us to adapt the national standards that we have been trying to put together for the last year,” Barba said. “The guidelines we have adopted are very comprehensive. They have a lot of good information in there and we expect all future roundabouts to be designed in accordance with this and whatever future revisions are made to this standard.

“It doesn’t require all intersections to be roundabouts,” Barba said in response to a question Mitchell posed. “It gives us the opportunity to look at the subdivisions as they are coming in very carefully to determine where we are going to need a roundabout or where we believe we are going to need a roundabout and it gives us authority to do that and go through that process.”

“Everybody knows how I feel about these,” Tobias said. “I did some research today about the pros and cons and in most cases it improves traffic. It’s just that in our climate here, it’s the speed that these people drive through. The concern that I have is the roundabout that could be right at the intersections of schools where you have pedestrian walkways. You also have the speed of the traffic on some of these roads to go from 50 miles an hour to a roundabout where you have to go 15 or 20. I’m also looking at the emergency vehicles that have to go through there. Those are the big concerns that I have when we start looking at roundabouts throughout the city.”

After saying roundabouts are safer than other intersections because they eliminate broadside collisions, Barba admitted “they do take a lot of right-of-way. You don’t want to be taking out houses to put in a roundabout.”

“I was a fan of roundabouts in 2016 when I started seeing some roundabouts go in,” the mayor said. “I watch our roundabouts carefully. I’ve gone and sat at intersections. I’ve drone-videoed intersections. I’ve looked at intersections I thought needed roundabouts. I am obsessed. I’ve only quadrupled or more my belief that as long as it is the appropriate engineering and at the right intersection, I’d give my left arm to see a roundabout.”

Mitchell specifically cited the intersection of “Spring Branch and Veterans,” although I assume he was referring to the Silverado/Veterans intersection, where, he said, “that stop sign backs up traffic forever and ever. I’ve drone videoed that intersection and about one out of every four vehicles runs that stop sign. Some people just drive through it and never slow down. So I want ‘em.”

“I’ve never been a big fan of roundabouts,” Rizo said. “I kinda hate ‘em. But what I hate worse is what the mayor just touched on. I’ve seen this become a pattern here in Kyle and that’s people running stop signs. I had a gentleman the other day in a blue Ford pickup who ran five stop signs near the downtown area and I didn’t appreciate it because he almost hit me as well. What concerns me is what if there’s a family walking across the street? Little-by-little, peoples’ bad habits are leaning me towards roundabouts.”

“I did not like roundabouts either,” Flores-Cale said. “And when the Burleson one came, it was a game-changer. So now I am Team Roundabout. I feel like I’m a traitor to myself and to the people I told that I hated roundabouts. But I only take Burleson now when I go to the H-E-B. As someone who did not initially support a roundabout — who despised it — I have to say ‘I love it.’ If they’re made right, they can benefit the city.”

Kyle’s continuing love affair with roundabouts

 

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.

Size of roundabout needed for FM1626

As I have written many times, I have nothing against roundabouts, per se. In fact, I think they are kind of cool in the right place. My problem is, I am still not convinced a road with a 55-60 mile-an-hour posted speed limit is the right place.

I know roundabout champion and Kyle Assistant City Manager James Earp has produced all kinds of charts and graphs proving how safe roundabouts are, but none of his charts and graphs indicate if or when a study has been conducted on a roundabout placed on a four-lane divided highway such as FM 1626 where the speed limit is between 55 and 60 mph (and actual driving speeds are closer to 65). His charts show quite conclusively that roundabouts require motorists to reduce their speeds to negotiate the curvature, but he has produced nothing to show how many feet is required to slow the speed to the safe limit when the motorist is driving as fast as they do on FM 1626.

My limited research provided me with only one roundabout that has ever been constructed on a highway with a speed limit of 60 miles an hour and that highway is the 23-mile-long A612 which originates in England’s central Nottingham and ends in Averham. However, the speed limit on that part of the A612 where the roundabout is located is only 40 miles an hour and, at that point, the A612 is a two-lane road.

Then I ran across this interesting document prepared by the U.S. Department of Transportation, no less, which indicates that a roundabout on a road like FM 1626 would be required to have a radius (not a diameter, but a radius) of 250 feet. That seems to me to be a fairly large structure However, if the speed limit on 1626 between Kohlers and Marketplace was reduced to, say, 45 miles an hour, the required radius would be only around 150 feet, a significant size reduction.

This study also mentioned something else about roundabouts on four-lane roads such as 1626. As Mayor Pro Tem Damon Fogley correctly pointed out, they would reduce the number of collisions in which one vehicles smashes into another at a 90-degree angle. "However," the Department of Transportation study says, "at multilane roundabouts, increasing vehicle path curvature creates greater side friction between adjacent traffic streams and can result in more vehicles cutting across lanes and higher potential for sideswipe crashes."

So instead of the type of car crashes you’re likely to see while watching a Grade B cops-and-robbers movie, you’re more likely to see FM 1626 becoming a miniature NASCAR track with those types of accidents.

Pick your poison.

As expected, TxDOT kills roundabout

 (Updated Thursday, Aug. 3 at 1 p.m.)
 In the second paragraph of this original article I wrote "I have reached out to the city for additional information and city spokesman Kim Hilsenbeck has promised to get back with me before this day is done. I will update this article when I receive that information." Ms. Hilsenbeck did timely share with me the short, terse letter the city received from Victor Vargas, an area engineer with TxDOT's South Travis Area Office in Austin. The two sentence letter did not completely close the roundabout door (presumably it could be reopened if the speed limit on Kyle Parkway was reduced dramatically). However, the letter opened with the simple, declarative sentence: "As discussed earlier TxDOT will proceed with issuance of work order to install a signal at subject intersection." So assume that by this time next year, a traffic light, not a roundabout, will be in place at Kyle Parkway and Kohlers Crossing.

One other thing worth noting: In a social media posting, one rather ill-informed city council member claimed "TxDOT withdrew funding" for the roundabout, which of course, is obviously untrue since TxDOT never offered any funds for a roundabout that could have subsequently been withdrawn. The council member seems to be suggest TxDOT reneged on a promise or a deal and that certainly is not the case.

(Original Post)
TxDOT has put the kibosh on the idea of a roundabout at Kohlers Crossing and Kyle Parkway, which is about as newsworthy as reporting no one drowned again last night in the pond at the northwest corner of that intersection.

Mayor Todd Webster announced the death during last nights’ council meeting in response to a citizen who expressed fear that money for constructing the roundabout could be mysteriously hidden in a secret city fund. I have reached out to the city for additional information and city spokesman Kim Hilsenbeck has promised to get back with me before this day is done. I will update this article when I receive that information.

What would have been a shocker and news that would have deserved huge headlines would be if TxDOT had approved the idea. My only question is why it took this long for the agency the nail the coffin shut on this plan. My guess is that the folks in the TxDOT offices have been laughing so hard that idiots in Kyle were actually seriously advocating this idea that they wanted to make sure they were in complete control of their faculties before fashioning a serious response.


I’ll be the first to admit it when I’m wrong
My mention of the roundabout’s death on Facebook last night prompted this snarly reply today from Council Member Damon Fogley: "Let me guess you are a traffic engineer too pete" (sic)

The truth is I was an early advocate of the roundabout. As someone who has driven extensively throughout the United Kingdom as well as all over the European continent, I am very familiar with the concept of roundabouts and am actually a big fan of them. In England I encountered a number of roundabouts that involved as many as eight roads coming together. It took a day or two to learn how to navigate these properly, but once I did I found they actually promoted traffic flow.

Based on this experience, I approached assistant city manager James Earp during a sparsely attended traffic seminar late last year and asked him if anyone had ever considered a roundabout at Kohlers and the parkway. I did not know at the time he was the area’s foremost advocate of roundabouts. He greeted my suggestion with devotion bordering on adoration and within a few days had provided me all kinds of information on roundabouts, which I eventually plowed through.

About six months ago, I was enjoying a late afternoon respite in the backyard of a prominent Kyle citizen who also happened to be a traffic manager and someone who has supervised his fair share of roundabout installations. I mentioned the idea of a roundabout at Kohlers and the parkway and he told me a roundabout there was impossible simply because of the 60 mile an hour speed limit on the parkway. That was the first time I had heard that, so I began bugging traffic and civil engineers throughout the state of Texas — more than 50 of them, as it turned out — and all but one of them told me the same thing: You can’t install a roundabout in a road where the speed limit is greater than 55 miles an hour and the overwhelming majority told me the maximum speed limit for a road with a roundabout is 45 miles an hour. The one who said something different said, yes, a roundabout could be placed at that intersection but it would have to be at least a mile in diameter. I knew that was never going to happen.

Which led me to the conclusion that I was wrong about my original advocacy of that roundabout and I am here admitting I was wrong.

Hey, I’m still a big fan of roundabouts. But I also have been around long enough that a solution to one traffic situation might not work in all traffic situations, just like a band-aid is not going to stop the bleeding of all wounds. And when those who make their living solving these types of problems all tell me the same thing, I’m going to have to admit I was wrong in my original beliefs.

So, the direct answer to the honorable council member is "No, I’m not a traffic engineer, but, unlike too many of our elected officials in Kyle, I do have an open mind which makes me willing and capable of changing my opinion when all the experts tell me my original opinion was wrong."

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.