Members of Fort Wright City Council traveled to Carmel, Indiana this month to learn more about roundabouts and traffic circles. The Brent Spence Corridor Project may be bringing roundabouts to Fort Wright and Fort Mitchell. In response, Fort Wright council members have a lot of questions.
Mayor Dave Hatter wanted to remind citizens that the roundabout decision is out of the city’s hands.
“It’s a state road; we cannot decide what the state will do,” Hatter said. “However, we want to be as informed as possible and keep the citizens informed.”
Fort Wright has been asking the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for more information, more traffic studies, and more consideration of how this will uniquely affect the city’s traffic. Their trip to Carmel, Indiana is their latest information-gathering effort.
Carmel is recognized worldwide for its unique approach to traffic. They have been on a mission since the 1990s to replace all of the city’s signalized intersections with roundabouts. Now, with 150 roundabouts, they have more than any other American city.
“In Carmel, we drove for miles without seeing a light,” council member Margie Witt said. “It was truly just roundabouts.”
Witt compiled a summary of the group’s observations during their trip. The city will send that summary to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to be considered in their decision.
In that summary, Witt compares traffic in Carmel and Fort Wright. At the February council meeting, she expressed a concern that the proposed Fort Wright roundabouts are too close to a signalized intersection.
“My concern with the traffic lights at Kyle’s/Dixie and at the city building is that those traffic lights will cause traffic to back up and interfere with the traffic flow through the roundabout,” Witt said. “So it [would] circumvent any traffic improvement from the roundabout itself.”
According to Witt, this is something that Carmel doesn’t currently have to deal with.
“[In Carmel], they had room to stretch out these roundabouts and build around them; it looked like new development,” Witt said. “We’re trying to retrofit here. From what I saw, I think having those lights so close will be an issue.”
Fort Wright city government plans to meet with officials from Carmel soon to ask more about their roundabouts. They intend to get more information to bring back to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
The city hopes that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet can address these concerns, among others, in its road plan. There is currently no confirmed construction start date for the Brent Spence Corridor Project.
