A recent overbooked Saturday presented my family with a challenge: Try to get in and out of Millburn Elementary School and not deal with any traffic hassles.
A key element of that challenge: Would a direct path involving a traffic signal or a longer option involving a roundabout get us home faster?
To be clear, if this scenario had been presented during a weekday commute, the decision would have been to stay home. The Millburn Strangler isn’t referred to as the Millburn Strangler because of its shy and retiring nature.
But Saturdays can be a crap-shoot in Lake County — maybe you’ll roll along without touching your brakes, or maybe you’ll be on the road at the exact moment when everyone decided to flood over to the mall or a junior soccer tournament.
In our case, the traffic hazard was a sectional cross-country meet, featuring participants from no less than 13 schools. It would also feature the parents and grandparents of said participants, nearly all of them traveling in unwieldy SUVs or minivans.
It is critical to note that Millburn Elementary School is served by exactly one exit from its parking lot to Millburn Road, and one exit to Crawford Road, which feeds to Millburn on the south. The forecast called for pain.
That pain was avoided via two strategies. First, on arrival, we approached the school property from the north, heading down Crawford from other business that left us on Route 173. Crawford, by the way, is not paved for most of that stretch, and in fact barely resembles a developed roadway at times. I was reminded of childhood hunting trips in the deepest pockets of Iowa.
Second and most importantly, upon departure, we headed east to go west. And, by that, I mean we took Millburn to Hunt Club Road and its roundabout rather than to Route 45 and its overwhelmed traffic signal.
The roundabout was as busy as I’ve ever seen it, as it fielded both post-race escapees and shoppers headed to and from Gurnee Mills. And I rolled along without touching my brakes.
That demonstration of a roundabout’s ability to handle a healthy load of traffic came to mind this week as the Lake County Division of Transportation (LCDOT) prepared to unveil its “preferred alternative” to improve the intersection of Fairfield and Monaville roads.
As detailed in this space in January, the northwest Lake County crossroads is currently controlled by a four-way stop that has become outdated. At that time, LCDOT officials stated that they planned to, “evaluate the options of a traffic signal, roundabout or a ‘do nothing’ scenario.”
Insert your own joke here using the phrase “do nothing” and a government body.
As detailed in documents released prior to Tuesday’s meeting, the selected option is … drumroll … a roundabout, which would be the sixth constructed this decade in Lake County.
The justification is found in a few select pieces of evidence posted at the LCDOT website and scheduled to be discussed with the public at Tuesday’s meeting:
In response to a question submitted at a January informational meeting, LCDOT reported that it has reviewed crash data from three of the other roundabouts in the county — the first of which opened in 2010 — “and found that overall crashes were reduced by 46 percent and injury and fatal crashes were reduced by 85 percent.”
Using data from the Federal Highway Administration, LCDOT reports that a signalized intersection results in a 5- to 45-percent reduction in crashes compared to a four-way stop, while a roundabout results in a 60- to 70-percent reduction. This occurs primarily from eliminating “crossing conflicts.”
Based on forecasts of traffic volume at the Fairfield-Monaville intersection in 2040, the estimated average delay per vehicle would be 39 seconds if the four-way stop remains in place; 29 seconds if a traffic signal is installed; and 11 seconds if traffic proceeds through a roundabout.
By the way, also under consideration in the overall scope of improvements to the area is turning Old Monaville Road — which currently runs about a half-mile between Fairfield and Monaville south of the main interection — into a cul-de-sac. The concept calls for the cut-through access to be closed at its current intersection with Monaville, where nine collisions were reported between 2006 and 2014.
Following Tuesday’s announcement, the timeline begins to move toward a two-year design phase followed by a two-year construction period. In other words, by 2021 or so, county motorists will have another roundabout to compete with signalized intersections when making go- or no-go travel decisions.
