Mayor Ben Cantu has a simple observation when it comes to roundabouts — do not judge them by what the city allowed to be installed on Woodward Avenue between Union Road and Airport Way.

His observation comes on the heels of yet another Manteca resident appearing before the City Council to ask elected leaders to address safety concerns regarding the Woodward Avenue roundabouts.

The resident asked the council to consider replacing yield signs with stop signs to turn the roundabout at Woodward and Oleander avenues  into a four-way stop.

It is similar to what Ripon did with a roundabout at River Road and Murphy Road several years ago following a high-speed motorcycle fatality occurred at the roundabout.

The resident noted he repeatedly has seen motorists speed through the roundabout without slowing down.

Roundabouts designed right, as Cantu pointed out, increase safety of motorists and pedestrians alike, keep traffic flowing that eliminates stop and go movements that hinder air quality, and are less expensive than traffic signals to install and cost less in the long-haul to maintain.

“Roundabouts can be effective,” Cantu said.

The city has more roundabouts in the works farther west on Woodward Avenue as well on South Main Street at an intersection that will have travel lanes from all four directions fed into it — the future intersecting of South Main and the envisioned Raymus Parkway.

Cantu has driven the Woodward Avenue corridor numerous times.

He noted the roundabouts are smaller. They don’t “protrude” as they did not alter the corner properties as much as they do in other cities which means there is only a slight jog for traffic not making a turn that does little, if anything, to slow down speeds.

“It is what happens when developers are allowed to design (roundabouts)”, Cantu said.

During last week’s council meeting Cantu noted he had seen people speed through the roundabouts and even go the wrong way to make left turns.

Cantu added that the tight turning radius of the Woodward roundabouts “don’t accommodate delivery trucks or school buses.”

What staff might suggest in response to the Woodward Avenue roundabouts could be problematic. Making them a four-way stop might increase the safety but it would defeat the purpose of keeping traffic flowing along Woodward Avenue that falld in the twilight zone between a collector street and an arterial.

Woodward was originally envisioned as a four-lane arterial until Atherton Drive popped up in traffic planning and development patterns 20 years ago.

Until the missing link of Atherton Drive was completed two years ago between Airport Way and Union Road, frustrated motorists in backed up 120 Bypass traffic during the afternoon commute would “bypass it” by exiting at Airport, traveling Woodward to Moffat and then accessing Highway 99.

The Woodward roundabouts were installed partially to discourage such bypass traffic. The primary reasons were for safety of pedestrians and motorists and moving traffic from backing up in Woodward.

A roundabout on Woodward near Oleander — Al Fonseca Lane — was where a double occurred in November 2016 when two motorcyclists struck it at a high rate of speed several weeks after it was completed.

Cantu pointed to the roundabout San Joaquin County installed on Eleventh Street and Grantline Road east of Tracy as a roundabout that was effectively designed. The two-lane roundabout moves a high volume of traffic with a significant proportion of it being semi-trucks. It eliminates traffic being stacked up at red lights and reduces the potential for collisions.

Caltrans is employing a similar design for a roundabout on Highway 88 in eastern San Joaquin County.

Cantu noted the roundabout on Louise Avenue west of Cottage Avenue at the entrance to the Trumark Homes development is of a better design.

It was shifted to the then undeveloped north side of Louise. Ideally a roundabout would sit squarely in the middle of an intersection with land taken in equal portions from all four corners to accommodate the circular turn movement.

The city opted to go ahead with a roundabout at that location. If they didn’t projected traffic volume would have required traffic signals that would have been in close proximity to existing traffic signals at Cottage and Louise.

That would have led to traffic flow issues mirroring that between the Highway 99 ramps and the Northwoods/Commerce Drive intersection along East Yosemite Avenue. It would have created traffic congestion and frustrated motorists trying to travel down Louise Avenue, one of only three east-west arterial that goes from the city’s western boundary to its eastern edges after crossing Highway 99.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com