The proposed roundabout at Sahuarita Road has entered its third public comment period, town officials confirmed Monday, after the second public comment period generated sufficient comment to require comment.
The project, first proposed two years ago, would replace a four-way stop that residents describe as “fine,” “a death trap,” “historic,” and “fine” again, depending on the resident.
Monday's session ran ninety minutes. A Ledger analysis found that forty of those minutes were spent on the traffic circle, twenty-five on whether a roundabout is the same thing as a traffic circle (it is not, and the man who raised the distinction had slides), and the remainder on an unrelated dispute about the library's new hours.
“I've been circling this issue for two years,” resident Carl Dupree told the council, to no reaction. “That was a joke,” he added, to less.
Town traffic engineer Priya Natarajan, appearing before the council for the eleventh time, delivered her presentation from memory and at one point answered a question before the microphone reached the questioner. Studies, she repeated, show roundabouts reduce serious collisions by up to 80 percent. “The data has not changed,” she said. “The data is not going to change. I will see everyone at comment period four.”
The comment period closes October 1, unless it doesn't.
Colleen Vasquez covers town government. She takes the long way around.