TERRE HAUTE — The question Jim Brainard routinely asks his audiences around the country strikes a nerve with everyone.
“Nobody ever runs through a yellow light here, right?” he’ll say.
Motorists do, of course, every day. Brainard knows that. He’s mayor of Carmel, a city of 83,655 residents known throughout Indiana for its affluence and elsewhere for its bear-hug embrace of a unique traffic-control structure — the roundabout. Carmel boasts 85 of those circular intersections that guide vehicles through and onward, without a stop. Traffic only slows. And yields. Thus, cars and trucks don’t sit idling at stoplights, burning up fuel and commuting time. Traffic signals — which cost an average of $150,000 each, Brainard said — aren’t needed.
Most importantly, accidents tend to be fender-benders, rather than dangerous T-bone collisions common at traditional, right-angle intersections, especially when a driver speeds up to blow through a yellow-turning-red light.
Carmel installed its first roundabout in 1997, a year after Brainard took office. Like most Hoosiers, he didn’t grow up with traffic circles. His hometown of Bristol in northern Indiana had one stoplight, the old-school kind. As a graduate student in college, Brainard visited England and became a convert. After he got elected in 1996, “I thought, ‘We ought to be trying this.’ ”
They did. Today, Carmel streets feature nearly twice as many roundabouts as any other town in America. Colorado Springs ranks No. 2, with 71, and 13 more are under construction, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
There were skeptics in Carmel.
“Change is hard,” said Brainard, a fifth-term Republican, “but if it works better and saves lives, most people will go along with it.”
With half-hour commutes cut in half, roundabouts are popular, he insists. “We couldn’t take a roundabout out in Carmel if we wanted to,” Brainard said.
Other Hoosier cities have joined in. The Indiana Department of Transportation has built roundabouts in Valparaiso, Westfield, Morgan County, Noblesville, Fort Wayne, Pendleton, Lafayette and Vigo County. Yes, the Terre Haute area has two roundabouts — one constructed by INDOT at Indiana 42 and Swalls Road east of Terre Haute International Airport, and one by the Terre Haute Department of Redevelopment on New Margaret Avenue near the east Wal-Mart. In a 2011 interview with the Tribune-Star, then-INDOT Commissioner Michael Cline projected his department would install 35 to 40 roundabouts statewide within five years.
By 2016, Terre Haute could have five. The Indiana 641 Bypass project, due for completion that year, includes two roundabouts, and pavement on both could be laid later this year, said INDOT spokesperson Debbie Calder, and excavation work on both began late last month. City Redevelopment also plans another roundabout as part of a $4.1-million extension of New Margaret Avenue, the next phase of that eastside project. Also, Indiana State University’s long-range master plan, unveiled in 2009, calls for a series of roundabouts on Third Street near campus.
Terre Haute’s two existing roundabouts see limited traffic, for now. The upcoming Indiana 641 Bypass circles will give many local and pass-through motorists their first taste of a transportation concept modernized in Great Britain in the 1960s. Their emergence marks a culture change for Terre Haute, where two roundabouts planned for the Brown Boulevard project were eliminated by the city for cost-saving reasons in 2008.
Some Hauteans encounter roundabouts elsewhere. Last Thursday, local cyclist Pat Cahill rode his bike around the roundabout at Indiana 42 and Swalls Road on a mid-morning outing. While on business in Indianapolis and Carmel, Cahill navigates numerous roundabouts in his car. “I love ’em,” he said, taking a cycling break Thursday. “And they make traffic flow.”
Cliff Lambert, city redevelopment director, supports that assessment. “We believe [a roundabout] makes the traffic flow more regularly,” he said.
Modern roundabouts streamline traffic better than their early-20th-century ancestors, known as “rotaries,” such as Monument Circle in Indianapolis, Brainard explained. Those older, circular junctions were larger, so drivers approached at higher speeds and swerved around slower vehicles. Some had traffic signals, too. “The smaller the roundabout, the safer it becomes,” Brainard said.
They save Carmel money in the long term, too, he said. Brainard estimates that construction of a roundabout often ranges from $400,000 to $500,000, but the circles last around 25 years, compared with 10 years for the costly signal equipment at conventional intersections, as INDOT statistics verify.
Still, evidence wins supporters only momentarily. Their own experience behind the wheel, steering their Ford F-150 or Dodge minivan through the turn and onto their desired road matters most. Usually, drivers’ first tests of a roundabout ease anxieties. After one try, the counterclockwise system of navigating an intersection feels simpler.
“The more you do it, the more comfortable you get,” Calder said.
Indiana has adapted, Brainard said, and stands as a national pioneer in roundabout usage. That includes places beyond central Indiana, including Terre Haute.
“They did it in Indianapolis,” Cahill said, before speeding off on his bike, “surely we can do it here.”
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