Try, try again: Why Raleigh has to rip up and replace a recently installed roundabout
About a month after the city built a concrete roundabout on Little John Road in Southeast Raleigh, workers were out there again Monday with shovels and a jackhammer breaking it apart and hauling it away.
The roundabout’s undoing is temporary and has to do with the GoRaleigh buses that traverse Little John each day. City officials say the setback has made them a little wiser and will help them avoid the error in the future.
Like many other roundabouts the city has built in recent years, this one at the intersection of Weston Street was meant to slow drivers down without bringing them to a halt. After a lengthy planning process that included feedback and approval from residents in the neighborhood, the city installed two roundabouts on Little John and four partial humps known as speed cushions.
These were the first roundabouts the city has built on a narrow residential street that also serves as a GoRaleigh bus route, says Will Shumaker, who manages Raleigh’s traffic calming program. Planners made sure the roundabouts were designed so buses would be able to navigate them, Shumaker said.
“We worked with the transit division beforehand on the dimensions and overall footprint and came to a general consensus for approval,” he wrote in an email. “But with anything new, there is a learning curve.”
About that utility pole ...
It turns out no one took into account a utility pole in the southwest corner of the intersection. The pole is right up against the curb, and it quickly became apparent that the rear-end of a bus rounding the roundabout on that side would clip the pole. That forced buses to go over the roundabout.
“Due to this special infrastructure configuration, we are removing the originally placed traffic circle and replacing it with one that has a smaller footprint as to not impact transit access to their route along Little John Rd.,” Shumaker wrote.
The replacement roundabout will cost $8,500, plus an extra $1,275 to demolish the old one and prep the site.
The other roundabout on Little John, at Carlisle Street, does not have a pole problem and will remain as it is for the time being.
The city plans to install traffic-calming roundabouts along other GoRaleigh bus routes and now knows it needs to consider what’s around each intersection when determining whether a bus can safely get through.
In a way, Shumaker said, the city was fortunate that the roundabout at Little John and Weston was built before the others.
“We were able to work with the contractor to pause construction and perform an audit along all other traffic calming projects that overlap with transit corridors to ensure no other impacts such as this one exist,” he wrote.
This story was originally published March 20, 2023 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Try, try again: Why Raleigh has to rip up and replace a recently installed roundabout."
