Northpinellas: Beach roundabout: bad idea whose time has come

Clearwater city commissioners gulped hard and did what they had to do Thursday to start fixing the public safety hazard that is the Clearwater Beach entryway roundabout. They approved a more than $300,000 package of modifications to the roundabout's geometry and asked the city staff to bring back cost estimates for tearing down the massive fountain in the middle of the oval and replacing it with something else.

Not since the Clearwater commission passed on the opportunity to buy then-undeveloped Sand Key for $3-million in the 1960s have city leaders done something that brought them as much public ridicule as building this roundabout.

The commissioners who sat on the dais Thursday are not the ones who in 1998 approved construction of the roundabout.

They are not the ones who allowed then-City Manager Mike Roberto to rush the project's design, when his own staff was telling him they had not been given enough time to properly study it.

These commissioners are not the ones who sat mute when, in January 1999, Roberto changed the concept plan they had approved for the middle of the roundabout -- a simple, low reflecting pool with dolphin sculptures in the middle -- and instead concocted a massive, wedding cake-style fountain that blocked drivers' view and sprayed water on their cars.

Those commissioners are all out of office now. But current city commissioners -- and especially Mayor Brian Aungst, who wasn't even elected until the roundabout was under construction -- unfairly get included by the public in the general sweep of criticism about city projects gone bad in recent years.

Perhaps these commissioners and City Manager Bill Horne, just named to the post last week, will be the ones to sweep up the messes left by previous administrations.

Toward that end, it would be instructive to think about some of the things that went wrong -- and right -- in the roundabout project and use that experience as a guide for the future:

A roundabout can work.

Let's think back to the days when the entrance to Clearwater Beach consisted of four (or was it more?) intersections and a confusing array of traffic lights. Gridlock often occurred in that tangle of intersections during the busy season, making it impossible to enter or exit the island without long waits and the assistance of police and police aides who directed traffic. Cars backed up all the way to Sand Key and through downtown Clearwater.

Today, unless the Memorial Causeway drawbridge stops traffic, cars move slowly but steadily on and off the beach, usually without the assistance of police. The roundabout keeps traffic moving, reduces backups and in fact is carrying more cars at peak hours than it was designed to.

So as ideas go, this was a pretty good one. But as we all know, something got lost in the translation, because motorists are playing bumper cars trying to get into and out of the roundabout. Which brings us to our next point.

The experts don't know it all.

A roundabout is an effective way to move traffic, but it must be designed well and with local drivers in mind. And this one wasn't.

Though the city hired a roundabout "expert" to design the traffic circle, it is now generally accepted that the roundabout was squeezed into a space that was too small for it, making the circle's turning radius too tight for easy negotiation and the exits too close to each other.

The lanes are too narrow, especially considering how many things a driver must watch for while going around the circle. And the angles of the exits are too sharp, so some motorists drive over curbs and landscaping.

The city has hired another roundabout expert, this one from England, to design the corrections, but this City Commission should avoid making the same mistake as the last one in relying solely on the advice of one expert.

Clearwater's commissioners are smart people, and they know how people drive around here. They know that many of the people driving the roundabout each day are tourists who have never been here before. They know that many of the local drivers are elderly. They know that many of the vehicles that go through the roundabout are big and long -- buses, recreational vehicles, beer trucks, fire trucks. They know that if Clearwater Beach's redevelopment dreams are realized in the future, the roundabout must be able to handle more cars than it does now.

So if commissioners believe and agree that the lanes need to be a little wider or the exit angles less extreme, they should make it so, even if their roundabout "expert" thinks they are being silly. Speaking of silliness . . .

Blind curves are a bad idea on a roundabout.

Motorists entering a roundabout from a side street must be able to see approaching traffic long enough to make a decision about whether to go or wait, move their foot from the brake to the gas and turn the wheel. In other words, as one speaker put it Thursday, they need to get a "visual head start."

But because of the tightness of the roundabout, the close proximity of the exits and the high-walled fountain that occupies the entire center, motorists can't see approaching traffic until it is almost upon them. Lesson for the future: Whatever goes in the center of this roundabout needs to be flat -- very flat.

Money matters.

Money apparently was no object in the original construction of the roundabout and its ostentatious fountain. It would be equally wrong to make money the object in the reconstruction.

A case in point: As this column was being written, the city staff was examining the fountain construction to see if there was a way to retain a part of it, thereby saving the money that was spent to build it.

We want our government to be frugal, but if saving money becomes the goal in this case, we may wind up with another bungled entryway. Even if only the bottom layer of the fountain is retained, it will still be hard for drivers in regular cars to see approaching vehicles (we don't all drive SUVs and trucks that give a bird's-eye view of things) and the fountain wall will still be distractingly close to the traffic lanes. Plus, the internal workings of the fountain have been faulty and costly to maintain.

Keep it simple, and don't rush it.

The roundabout and fountain were designed and built in a rush by a city administration eager to create something splashy and fabulous in Clearwater Beach. But Clearwater Beach already has some impressive features: a beautiful, lushly landscaped causeway, and a stunning sand beach along the Gulf of Mexico. We need an entryway that is attractive, but that is primarily effective at moving traffic safely.

City commissioners should take plenty of time to ask questions and mull over the answers before deciding what is right for the roundabout.

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