Voices for the Roundabout - Letter to the Board

March 18, 2016

Dear Board of Trustees,

I’m a new resident of Ossining. I moved down from Peekskill and bought in the High Meadow Coop this past August. I’m a professor at SUNY Purchase, and a retired Army Staff Sergeant.

The roundabout situation was recently brought to my attention. I’m sorry to hear that public opinion is trying to prevent you from doing your job and following through with the careful planning that you’ve been engageing in for well over a year. I’ve lived all over the world, and to me roundabouts seem normal, but I underestand that in smaller cities in America people aren’t used to them yet. I did a little research, and it seems like you are not alone in absorbing unfounded resistance from the community. All over the country, when plans are put forth for roundabouts, the community resists, sometimes strongly.

In a New York Times article from 2010, Eugene R. Russell Sr, a civil engineering professor at Kansas State and the chairman of a national task force on roundabouts, elaborates: "There's a lot of what I call irrational opposition. People don't understand. They just don't understand roundabouts.”

As I know you know from your research, roundabouts have been proven to be safer for cars and pedestrians, more ecologically friendly, and to keep a nice slow traffic flow.

The New York Times reports that “Despite these benefits, a circuitous pattern still seems to emerge whenever a community is faced with the specter of a roundabout. Fear and suspicion are manifested in petitions and tense town meetings — and over time they generally mellow into something resembling approval, acceptance or, just as desirable in the world of transportation engineering, apathy.”

While your experience with the community over this issue I’m sure feels unique, it is absolutely a normal resistance to roundabouts. This is confirmed in a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety titled “Long-Term Trends in Public Opinion Following Construction of Roundabouts.” Support for roundabouts went from 34% before the roundabouts were built, to 57% after they were built, to 69% after they had been in use for a year.

This was confirmed anecdotally by a friend of mine from Hamburg, NY where about 7 years ago they put a roundabout it. He said everyone complained about it before they built it, but then people thought it made the downtown look quaint and charming, and they didn’t have any trouble driving through it.

It’s a tense time in politics, everyone knows that, and I understand that the opposition has been vocal, but putting this off for another time is not going to help it come to fruition. If funding isn’t approved this week, the project will be put off to another building season, keeping our downtown with a sub standard intersection that endangers pedestrians and pollutes our village with the emmissions of so many standing vehicles.

I saw this happen in Peekskill a few months ago when an elderly pedestrian was hit by a car where they still haven’t fixed the interseciton at Main St. and Bank St. Aside from the obvious tragedy of an accident like that, I don’t know what liabilities our town could face if this intersection produces a casualty, but I don’t want my tax dollars going to paying for a lawsuit when it’s deemed that the council’s inaction caused it.

This is a great improvement for downtown. I’m proud of the work you’ve done to make it happen. People will move on and come around. Let’s finish the job. Don’t vote to defund the project.

Respectfully,

Alexis Cole