Once a week, sometime twice, the call goes to the Street Department crew at the Wake Forest Operations Center. They climb into the trucks, their equipment already aboard because they have assembled a kit, and they head for the town’s first roundabout where South Main Street meets South Avenue because another truck has tried to destroy its center.
After the novelty wore off in 2005, town residents appreciated the roundabout for its safety. “It is very functional, traffic flows really nicely,” Assistant Town Engineer Holly Miller told the Wake Forest Town Board Tuesday evening.
But – “We have a little problem,” she continued, showing a slide of a red 53-foot semi-trailer from Bentonville, Ark., trying to make a U-turn in the roundabout and climbing over the center rock wall on the northwest side.
That was taken June 6, 2006, and Miller said the incidence of trucks crashing into and over the wall – almost always at the same place, is about once a week.
“It’s becoming a maintenance nightmare,” she said.
The costs to the town average five men, material and equipment at $50 an hour or $250 per repair. It takes an average of an hour each time to reset the stone, and that is at least once, sometimes twice a week.
The estimate is that the town has spent $130,000 on repairing the wall since it was built.
The town could sue the drivers for damages but often no one knows who did it; there are no traffic cameras there to record the damages.
Miller went to the town board with a solution which is still evolving, which would be a mini-roundabout with the center substantially shrunk that consists of a mountable, very strong dome that large trucks can mount as they make their turns.
The commissioners had a lot of questions and suggestions. Miller said it probably not to be workable to send large trucks in another direction – such as North Main – and large trucks do have to come through Wake Forest to make local deliveries and reach other destinations.
“The lighting at night is not very good,” Commissioner Margaret Stinnett said, and Miller added that to her list for building the new roundabout along with more visual cues about where to drive and a smaller center or no center at all. She did suggest there could be a piece of public art or a tree in the center, though those might fare no better than the decorative sign poles which they finally had to replace with ordinary poles to keep down replacement costs.
Miller moved on to another site for a roundabout where North Wingate meets Stadium Drive/North Avenue.
Commissioner Zachary Donahue wondered if the additional roundabout “gives us any more ammunition to explore” the idea of the seminary campus as a large roundabout with one-way traffic.
“That was studied ten years ago before the bypass opened and it was not recommended,” Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said.
“I’m not very big on new roundabouts,” Stinnett said, adding that “People are going to fly through there,” apparently referring to the mini-roundabout.
Something is needed to visually slow down cars and pickup trucks, particularly those going out to Durham Road, Town Manager Mark Williams said.
Donahue suggested a baby carriage.
Miller will return to the board with a fuller concept.
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