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Broadway Mini Circles
To: Pete Rowan
Thank you for writing, and I am glad that the mini-circles are working as intended! To answer your questions, please see below.
Isaac Brownman
Assistant Town Manager
Town of Longboat Key
Broadway Neighborhood Traffic Calming Mini Circles
To: Longboat Key Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman
Good morning. Thank you for installing the neighborhood traffic calming mini circles on Broadway. We now have a few months experience with the circles and would like to communicate with you a few observations that are below:
• We believe the circles slow a certain percentage of the traffic. This is great. They have certainly slowed most trucks and drivers new to the neighborhood. Maybe 50% of the traffic now slows as they navigate around the circles at the 3 intersections.
Excellent! Yes, we are seeing positive results in our observations as well.
• Others are still driving too fast, hugging the curbs as they near the intersections allowing them to speed the length of the street. We had hoped for, and recommended, significantly larger circles that would have prevented such easy driving around the circles.
Unfortunately, and as communicated in the past, we cannot make the circles bigger and fit them within the existing intersection framework as they will compress the travel lanes too much. As season picks up, speeding through the circles will be harder to do.
• There have been negative comments regarding the appearance of these circles. The circles are not the most attractive neighborhood traffic calming circles that we have seen. Picture A below is what we envisioned and hoped for, and Picture B below is what we now have.
The e solid, rubberized curbing is robust and made for traffic bearing. For this product and specification, there were only two colors/styles to choose from: black w/ white reflectors or red w/yellow reflectors. The red w/yellow, in our opinion, would not have looked good at all.
• As Picture B below shows the sand is leaking out from under the pavers. Thus the edge curbing is now quite a bit higher than the pavers. We suggest the circle edge be made of concrete and sloped similar to the slope of a speed table. Please see the new circles being installed on 75th Street just south of Cortez and the circle edge in Picture A.
We will talk to our internal Public Works team and also reach out to our installation vendor on thoughts/recommendations for the sand. At this point, we are not pursuing concrete curbing as it is much more permanent, impactful to traffic during installation, and costly/destructive to remove to accommodate future resurfacing or road raising projects on Broadway. Also, the idea of this project was to introduce these circles as a “pilot” to see how effective they are before a more permanent concrete solution is considered – the good news is they seem to be working, at least at this point.
Regarding the slope, and as has been communicated in the past, a low-slope traffic table was not the Town’s intent for traffic calming along Broadway at four-way intersections. The idea of roundabouts and mini-circles as raised roadway traffic control, particularly at intersections with multiple movements happening, is the approach The Town supported to slow traffic and maintain more organized intersection movements.
• As we advised, and we think it is fine, most drivers are making left turns in front of the mini circles (except when a car is already there). We anticipated this when reading about neighborhood mini circles. Thus the 6 circle street signs, indicating the approaching circles, are not too meaningful and seem to be ignored by virtually all drivers.
Yes, regarding he first sentences, staff have observed cars making left-turns in front of the circles when it is safe and clear to do so and that seems to be working fine. Regarding the signs, the actual movement intent for vehicles under normal or heavier traffic conditions is to circumnavigate a