How do you ease traffic congestion, slow traffic down, enhance pedestrian safety, discourage through traffic in neighborhoods, and avoid expensive traffic signals while at the same time improving air quality?

The answer: Deploy roundabouts.

Manteca already has three roundabouts located within a block north of the Woodward Avenue corridor east of South Main Street. Two are at the edge of Tesoro Park and a future elementary school site while the other is much larger with an acre park in the middle.

Seven more are already approved to go on or near Woodward Avenue as part of the 1,650-home Trails at Manteca moving toward construction on the western end of Woodward Avenue. Two of the seven cul-de-sacs will be at access streets intersecting with Woodward Avenue.

Virtually every new neighborhood in the planning process has a requirement for roundabouts either adjacent to future schools or parks or deployed in a manner to slow traffic on the main access street. All roundabouts built in new neighborhoods as a condition of development are landscaped

They are also being pondered for use at some intersections on the proposed McKinley Expressway that will eventually be Manteca’s southern most thoroughfare swinging from the current terminus of McKinley Avenue at Woodward Avenue in southwest Manteca and eventually to a new interchange on Highway 99 midway between Ripon and Manteca

The three roundabouts already in place reflect two different strategies. The ones in the Tesoro neighborhood are designed to slow traffic down near schools and parks that have heavy foot traffic. The acre roundabout on Buena Vista Drive is designed to discourage future through traffic from the extension of Atherton Drive that is now under construction to Woodward Avenue. The area along Atherton Drive is zoned commercial and is expected to generate heavy traffic volumes.

The use of roundabouts would allow the city to not just keep traffic moving while slowing it down enough to allow access from connector streets but it would also go toward meeting a mandate of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to reduce vehicle idling. The more times vehicles have to stop at traffic signals or stop signs, the less efficiently they burn carbon-based fuel which in turn impacts air quality. Idling vehicles are a major source of valley air pollution.

Roundabouts also save cities a considerable amount of money and can reduce the cost of new homes. That is accomplished by deploying roundabouts instead of traffic signals wherever feasible on moderately traveled streets. Not only does that save $500,000 in upfront cost for signals but it reduces ongoing maintenance costs. The reduced development costs also can translate into slightly lower housing prices. The cost of neighborhood infrastructure including improvements to nearby arterial streets is collapsed into the price of a new home.