I do think it’s time for a little reality check. As the city considers a roundabout at the intersection of Michigan and Riverside Avenue there’s a lot of things to consider. Probably the most important is the safety of the people at that intersection. Making sure we have free-flowing traffic in a roundabout is not necessarily the safest way. I do agree that some changes need to be made at that intersection, but first let’s deal with some facts.
The bridge and Riverside Avenue is a state road known as Highway 7.
Next there has been no reported accidents of any kind at the Michigan and Riverside intersection over the last six years.
I recommend you see for yourself by going to http://gis.lhtac.org/safety/ which contains all accidents in Idaho for the past six years. We can go further back if necessary.
One thing to note is over the last six years there have been many accidents at the end of the bridge and highway 12. You think this would be a more important focus.
So back to the roundabout discussion. I want you to visualize a school bus and a logging truck trying to go through a roundabout at the same time. With only a yield caution, roundabouts can be very confusing.
If you’d like to try one go to Lewiston and drive down to the Snake River Avenue - Southway Avenue roundabout. How many accidents or fender benders have occurred at that roundabout? A lot more than none.
My personal opinion is that a stop sign system would be best. One argument against was that it would back up traffic on the bridge.
As many of you may remember we often had a train blocking the way which created backups on the bridge and on Michigan.
A stop sign system will not create such backups, provide better cross walk control, and keep the traffic flowing.
Let’s keep it simple because so often that is the best solution.
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