TODAY'S ISSUE: Ellijay Roundabout Is Good Roadbuilding Idea
ELLIOTT BRACK: Ever Wonder How Mountain Park's Park Got Its Depot?
NEWS: Gwinnett Police To Have Job Fair, Seeking New Recruits
TODAY'S QUOTE: Considering What Is Real and What Is Unreal

"Everything you can imagine is real."

-- Artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), via Roy McCreary, Dacula.

A Gwinnett County Police Department's Job Fair is set for Saturday, Oct. 4 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in front of the Gwinnett County Police Headquarters located at 770 Hi-Hope Road in Lawrenceville.

TODAY'S ISSUE
Roundabouts better way to flow through intersections
By Dan Winn
Retired Superior Court Judge
Cedartown
Special to GwinnettForum.com

SEPT. 30, 2003 -- Even a transportation novice observing the graceful traffic flow around Ellijay’s bustling town square in Northeast Georgia would come away mystified that there are so few circular intersections, or "roundabouts," in the state and the nation.

Like Ellijay’s two-year-old roundabout surrounding a memorial to slain warriors, these traffic devices have a whole lot more than grace going for them. As a more efficient method of moving traffic through most intersections, they have the potential to save this nation millions of gallons of gasoline and millions of hours in commute time, all while reducing traffic deaths and injuries.

A roundabout, in its simplest form, is a circle of road that surrounds a raised island in the middle of an intersection. Vehicles must move around the island to continue on their route, yielding to vehicles already in the circle. Vehicles can enter from each leg simultaneously.

Unfortunately, transportation engineers are locked into the mode of correcting every intersection by installing stop lights or, in the vast number of city outskirts, three- and four- way stop signs. These are almost universally an impediment to the smooth flow of traffic.

A survey by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety cites the effectiveness of circular intersections. It found a 76 percent reduction in injury-producing crashes and 39 percent fewer crashes overall at modern traffic circles compared with intersections using signals or stop signs. In addition, the institute estimates, roundabouts reduce the number of fatal and incapacitating injury crashes by an astounding 90 percent!

Considering that some 800 traffic deaths take place at traffic-light intersections, along with about 200,000 injuries, a roundabout ought to be among the first options considered in planning. It has the effect of slowing traffic entering and exiting the intersection while maintaining a constant flow of traffic. That’s not small potatoes in Georgia's gridlocked cities and suburbs; the average commuter in Atlanta wastes 53 hours and 84 gallons of fuel sitting in traffic every year.

In recent years, France has created roundabouts at the rate of about 1,000 a year – the leader, with more than 12,000 roundabouts; while hundreds exist in Britain, in Norway, in Sweden and in the Netherlands.

Two of the United States’ earliest, best and most prominent modern roundabouts were built in Vail, Colorado, in 1995. Commuters benefited when waiting time was nearly eliminated after Vail removed the stop sign-controlled ramp and frontage road intersections at its main entrance from I-70, replacing them with the pair of roundabouts. Thanks to the $2.2 million improvement, peak-hour traffic flow increased 10 percent.

The good news for taxpayers is that Vail’s roundabouts cost one-seventh the estimated cost of typical interchange capacity improvement projects, which involve widening the bridge and installing stop lights for about $15 million. More than $50,000 annually is saved by not needing two officers to direct traffic at the intersections. Roundabouts also offer far lower maintenance costs than traffic signals, which cost $3,000 per year in electricity, bulb replacement and other maintenance.

Even better news was that crashes declined from an average of seven per quarter over previous years, to an average of four per quarter, with no fatalities, after the roundabouts were constructed. Vail is no aberration, either. "Roundabouts, an Informational Guide," published by the federal Department of Transportation in 2000, reported that, "Experiences in the United States show a reduction in crashes after building a roundabout of about 37 percent for all crashes and 51 percent for injury crashes."

Because modern roundabouts require all drivers to slow, turn and yield before entering the intersection, crash rates are lower than at traffic signals. And because traffic moves at just 10-15 mph through the roundabout, crashes are much less likely to cause injury or death. When properly designed, injuries for bicyclists and pedestrians at roundabouts sharply decline, too.

After seeing the interchange easily handle heavy traffic during a terrible blizzard in the first week of 1996, both Vail newspapers printed apologies for their earlier opposition to the project.

Roundabouts are typically up to 30 percent more efficient than traffic signals, partly because there is no wasted red and yellow light time. That adds more capacity than at a signalized intersection. The reduced delay can also reduce air pollution from idling vehicles. Additionally, vehicles are quieter because of lower speeds and reduced braking and acceleration noise. By getting rid of the “expressway” look and feel of many arterials, they help reduce speeding nearby. And, as in Ellijay, the landscaped island in the center offers the chance to create more beauty and can be a focal point enhancing the town square.

It's peculiar to nag citizens to turn off a few lights at home when so many useless traffic lights are burning energy 24 hours a day. The savings in gasoline, construction costs, lost time and electricity are really astronomical money bonuses over and above the lives and injuries saved by roundabouts. Legislation to raise the gasoline mileage of sport-utility vehicles by a few gallons over a six-year period is trivial compared to a solid program of roundabout construction.

ELLIOTT BRACK
Mike Barnett was the guy getting depot to Mountain Park
By Elliott Brack
editor and publisher
GwinnettForum.com

SEPT. 30, 2003 -- Ever notice the railroad depot in the park at Mountain Park? With no railroad ever passing through that community, you might wonder how that train station got located there.

That came to mind the other day after hearing of the unexpected and untimely death of Mike Barnett, the former Gwinnett legislator, at age 59, from an apparent heart attack.

You see, Mike conceived the idea of having a "clubhouse" in Mountain Park. Back in 1998, Mike wrote me, outlining the depot story. Here is an abbreviated version of his
account.

* * * * *

Letter from Mike Barnett:

The story of the Mountain Park Depot is fun to remember. I was president of the Mountain Park Jaycees in 1976, and our meetings kept moving from place to place (Joe Brand's storage room, Gwinnett County Bank after they closed, Jim Howard's basement, etc.) We decided we needed a permanent place which could become a community center. We started pricing property and buildings and it seemed impossible.

(At that time) Mary Beth Busbee (the governor’s wife) was helping to preserve an old railroad depot in South Georgia, as Southern Railway was abandoning depots because of the liability. I called Mary Beth and she was very helpful, telling me an official of the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington I needed to talk to. Later, taking my family to Washington, I finally found that bureaucrat, and he gave me a contact at the Southern and a letter with his blessings.

After meeting with a Southern official, showing him the letter from the ICC and from the Governor's wife, a few weeks later he told of three depots that were to be demolished, saying if I would move one, he would allow it. I hit the road to visit all three sites. One was too wide, one could not be jacked up high enough to get over a nearby bridge, and one was perfect. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had found our community center. There was a small problem: it was in Shannon, Ga., above Rome, about 80 miles from Mountain Park.

About that time, I remembered a girl I dated in high school whose grandfather was in the house-moving business in Atlanta. He and a Southern Railway official went with me to Shannon.

While inspecting the depot, a local person inquired why we were poking around "their" depot. I produced a letter showing I had purchased the depot for a dollar, and we were about to move it. He said before he would see "their" depot moved out of town that he would burn it down. The railroad official reminded him that the depot was actually Federal property, and since we had his license plate number and name, he would be sent to federal prison if the depot burned.

You can imagine the nasty letters from the locals. I answered each, asking why they didn't do something with it before I bought it. Then I drew plans for the bracing; we cut it in half; loaded it on two huge trucks and took off for Mountain Park.

Our mover had said he would move it for $12,000. On the night before the move, there was a four man poker game played in the depot with the mover in attendance. Somehow the final price for moving the depot was $7,000. The moving money came from a note from the bank, with all the Jaycees signing the note, along with Don Heathman, who had just opened the supermarket there.

It took two days to load the depot, as a little group of Shannon citizens stood with tears in their eyes. With those people waving white handkerchiefs, you can imagine the cold chills I had as "my" depot rolled past them. All went fine along back roads until we reached the Forsyth County line.

The Forsyth sheriff said there was no way he would allow that building to proceed through his county and tie up traffic, etc. We had to stop for the night anyway. I walked about a mile to the nearest store and called the governor’s mansion and within minutes got Mary Beth to call me back at that pay phone. She wanted to know what had happened, since she was following our efforts. The next morning we had a State Trooper escort us with blue lights and siren through Forsyth County and downtown Cumming. As we passed through downtown, I think I remember waving at the very mad sheriff.

(Editor's note: ironically, eventually Mike moved to Forsyth County, where he was living at the time of his death.)

Later we arrived in Mountain Park, set the depot down, removed the bracing and patched the two halves back together. We now had our community center. It took several years to get it in the condition it is now in, with help from people like Wayne Mason, Jere Johnson and Wayne Shackelford.

As I pass by the depot now, I cannot help but get a little teary-eyed about all the people that helped make the depot a reality.

* * * * *

Mike Barnett, 1944-2003: may you rest in peace.

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