Dear Mayor Hollar and
Councilors:
On this day, the 19th
birthday of Keck Circle, am writing to look forward to Sunday, August 16, 2015
when the first modern roundabout in the northeast (east of Las Vegas and north
of Maryland) ends the teenage years.
Keck Circle, the 19th
roundabout built in the United States, represents a modern technology dating
from its inception in 1966 in the U.K. and composed of stone-age
materials. It is my hope to perhaps lunch
with some of the City committee members and councilors from the 1993-1995
period of study, design and construction.
It is noteworthy the $64,000
all-City funded project design costs were $2,300. Pinkham Engineering of Burlington, later
merged into Summit Engineering, handled the design with the involvement of
Michael J. Wallwork of Florida, then with the Florida Department of
Transportation and since the late 1990s a leader in roundabout design
nationally.
At some point the City
certainly will update this historic intersection. The original plan featured a slightly
narrower entry on the Main Street northbound and the large vehicle override of
the eastbound entry on Spring merits attention.
Certainly as we renew our core urban streets with cycle track Keck
Circle bicycle accommodation needs at least a minimum upgrade to on/off ramping
where approach lanes narrow thereby allowing cyclist the choice of shifting
onto shared space with the walk mode along with shared crosswalks—you will find
more than one Middle School student traveling on the sidewalk north of Keck
Circle and Main Street below while on their trip to and from school. Wallwork led the national evolution of
bicycle accommodation design to—at a minimum--on/off ramps on both single and
multi-lane roundabouts in recent years.
As you are well aware a
roundabout at Barre Street and Main Street remains as the chosen treatment to
connect Winooski East and West Bikepaths—easily possible as part of the re-use
of the beverage outlet re-development.
Mayor Hollar and City
Council August 16, 2015 Page 2
Montpelier’s two roundabouts
played a key role in my neighborhood’s North Avenue corridor study just now
ending with two field trips including one where our resident group was given
the positive emergency vehicle experience at your roundabouts by Fire Chief
Robert Gowans. The outcome of our study
includes an unprecedented long term recommendation for cycle track from end to
end of the 2.8 mile corridor and conversion of three of the current seven
signalized intersections to roundabouts.
You may find the various
video material of our November 1, 2013 field visit (particularly the 5:43
second segment) taken on that last summer-like Friday taken when school let out
at the Middle School, then later at the peak 4-5 p.m. traffic, about 2,100
vehicles an hour, at the US 2/302 roundabout.
Note the Keck Circle “walking school bus” from Union, the ambulance run,
the rookie driver operation of a chartered Greyhound bus, and the two people in
the splitter island refuge viewing the wind-driven wheel atop the bicycle sculpture. http://goo.gl/DdajOC
As you all recognize a
revolution in transportation begun in the 1990s with Montpelier roundabouts and
transportation paths a reflection of the early period when the City and the
State attained regional leadership. Now
on the immediate horizon for Montpelier are cycle track to bring bicycling to
all regardless of age or skill. Further
we are near both intercity and commuter rail with more than a thousand workers
accessing your worksites via 12-20 trains daily stopping at the new transit
center (already 50 Link bus runs each workday service handling about 500
individual commuters from Burlington to Montpelier, Middlebury and St. Albans
with the first Link bus dating from 2003).
Yours truly, Tony Redington
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