Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:38:49 -0400
From: Robert Britson
Subject: Roundabout
A roundabout is an efficient way to route traffic at this particular part of Hwy 87. Folks should already be driving slowly, but often do not. I would not be surprised if fewer trees were removed with the roundabout than would have occurred with widening and creating new turns.
People just need to learn how to drive within the roundabout. One advantage pointed out to me recently by a father whose son had a serious accident at an intersection, is that with a roundabout you have to look for traffic in one direction only. He was leaving his school, watching impatiently from both directions to enter the main road. The father felt his son would have been helped if he had watched from only one direction.
Perhaps Hwy 87 will be rerouted, anyway — my dream — since it is too narrow for its traffic, anyway, has inadequate shoulders, and carries speeding trucks and cars as they enter Pittsboro from the north. Janice Britson