By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Fort Wright city council listened to a representative from Verdantis, (formerly CT Consultants) talk about the proposed roundabouts on Kyles Lane Wednesday evening, which is what the state would like to install as part of the major rehaul of I-75 leading up to the new Brent Spence bridge.
The Transportation Cabinet had shown drawings to council previously, and the city asked Verdantis to come and explain the drawings further and their extended repercussions to council and take their questions.

City Engineer Marty Hellman showed renderings from the Transportation Cabinet’s file, first showing the signaled intersections, and then showing the roundabouts on either side of the extended bridge over the expressway. Hellman came out immediately on the side of the roundabouts.
Fort Wright Mayor Dave Hatter prefaced the presentation by saying that the city does not have a position on the roundabouts, and that’s why they asked Verdantis to come in and talk it through with the council members so that they understand exactly what the plans mean to the city.
“What they are asking us to do is to say are we for or against this conceptually,” Hatter stated. “We can steer it in the direction we think is best, but they’re going to do what they want to do.”
Council member Jay Weber had some concerns about the design of the roundabouts. He said that he didn’t think they were true roundabouts, but hybrids due to the fact that on one side incoming traffic would go straight across the roundabout. In traditional roundabouts, traffic is supposed to merge into the round part, seamlessly keeping traffic flowing. Weber said he has some friends who are police officers and they pointed out that specific part on the rendering also, saying that it was a good place for T-bone accidents.
The rendering also shows that there are no emergency lanes on the new bridge, because there are pedestrian lanes on the sides. None of the council members liked that fact.
Hellman explained that the main traffic designer for the project lives in Ft Wright, so she has a vested interest in what goes on in the city. He also said these plans were not final.
Weber asked if he had heard of Dutch roundabouts, and when he said no, Weber explained that when the Dutch roundabouts were first put in, they found that they weren’t big enough, and they had to take the entire roundabout out and redo it, at great cost. Weber said he had looked at the state of Kentucky’s website on roundabouts and there seemed to be a problem with the big trucks being able to A, stay in one lane, and B, clear the other roundabout merge lanes.
Hellman didn’t seem to think roundabouts were a problem, and reiterated that the plans were not final, and if they were designed correctly, none of the above mentioned problems would happen.

“Even under extreme heaviest conditions there is an improvement with the roundabout over the signalized intersections,” he stated. “So it will be a whole lot better.”
Another council member, Jason Collins, asked if they use traffic counts to make their decisions, or do they use projections, and Hellman said they use both counts and projections. Collins then referred to the traffic mess that was on Kyles Lane every morning and evening, and he wanted to know if they know the counts during the evening and morning rush hour, which makes the area almost gridlocked, and he said yes, again, that they have projected the counts to 2049.
Hatter ventured that the plans are not final and wondered if council was possibly getting too far into the weeds.
“So what I think you basically said is, assuming all these numbers are correct, and their models are correct and so forth, while the traffic flow in that area that’s up there now, where a roundabout would be better, it’s not necessarily going to improve the issues in these neighborhoods but you don’t expect it will make it worse,” said Mayor Hatter. “So the net is that while it will still be the same screwed up mess out here that it still is, this is not going to exacerbate that problem. And once you get there, it will be better.”
Council member Scott Wall said if the roundabouts will solve all the problems why not put one in front of the city building at the intersection of Kyles and Highland, or Kyles and Henry Clay. Hellman said there would be a space problem, putting two roundabouts so close together.
Council member Margie Witt brought up the fact that she is a walker, and likes having a traffic signal so that people stop at a red light. She acknowledged that she still makes eye contact with drivers so that they see her, but she has serious concerns about the roundabout pedestrian paths because the cars don’t stop, and the pedestrians don’t have the right of way.
A lot of students walk home from school on Dixie Highway, and they would have to take extra caution that cars don’t hit them.
“Ultimately it’s their decision, I mean, it’s their road, it’s their bridge, it’s their interstate,” Hellman said, “but they do want to take concerns that the city has into account of whatever they are doing.”
Hatter agreed that they have listened, although he was not pleased with the aesthetic changes they made last time.
“These are some pretty legitimate concerns,” Hatter said, “that I would like to have addressed in detail, and assurances that these would be fixed before we sign off on it. We hit some things tonight that I hadn’t thought of.”
He said some of the concerns people had brought to him were centered around the question, would roundabouts make the traffic congestion already present better or worse?
Despite Hellman’s enthusiasm about roundabouts almost always making traffic flow better, council members had a lot of skepticism.
“It’s going to be confusing to a lot of people, because people are confused by roundabouts,” Hellman conceded. “It’s more like a big elongated roundabout, not so much two roundabouts. It is still going to take some time to get used to it.”
I agree that the roundabout should be configured so all traffic must yield before entering the roundabout. Straight through traffic should be avoided at all costs. I also believe pedestrian and bike traffic need to be taken into account for safe passage. I support the idea of roundabouts at these intersections if the designs can be improved and appreciate the inputs from council.