Cars travel through the roundabouts at state Route 309 and Thayer Road and state Route 309 and Napoleon Road.
Jacob Espinosa | The Lima News
LIMA —The use of roundabouts is growing in Ohio.
And the Ohio Department of Transportation is spotlighting two of them along state Route 309 for reducing crashes, as part of National Roundabouts Week.
“Safety is really the driving force behind the roundabouts we have and the ones we have coming in the future,” Chris Hughes, ODOT District 1 deputy director said. “We have data that has been overwhelming in terms of, not just total crashes, but also severity and injuries showing the benefits.”
ODOT pointed out the lowered crash rates by the roundabouts at the intersections of state Route 309 at Thayer Road and Napoleon Road in Allen County in an announcement Monday.
The Thayer Road roundabout showed a 45 percent reduction in crash rates after being installed and the Napoleon Road roundabout showed a 43 percent reduction.
“The question really is why they are safer,” program manager for District 1 Rob White said. “All crashes are bad, but what we’re really concerned about are injury and fatal crashes. When you think about what causes those, you typically need two out of three things: a high-speed differential and either a left-turn or a head-on collision. When you introduce a roundabout, which is a series of curves that force you to slow down and turn right to enter and exit, you eliminate the high speed differential and you eliminate the left-turns.”
Hughes said three more roundabouts are in development in Allen County to be constructed in each of the next three years.
“The next one up will be in 2025 when we build a roundabout at state Route 81 and Thayer Road,” he added. “The following summer we will have a roundabout starting construction in 2026 at state Route 117 and state Route 501. And then in 2027, we will build a roundabout at state Route 65 and Bluelick Road on the north end of Lima.”
It helps that since Governor Mike DeWine announced a $425 million investment in safety improvements at intersections across the state in 2019, the reception has been largely positive.
“Public perception has really come a long way,” Hughes said. “When we were initially proposing those projects, there was a lot of apprehension and it was something that the public hadn’t seen before. As we’ve gotten our roundabouts open and traffic’s gotten used to them, the public really seems to have come around and we actually get more comments now from people asking for them rather than opposing them.”
For more information on National Roundabouts Week, visit bit.ly/47wPnfx.
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
