roundabout

Fairhope has been cited for many national awards for its beauty. But, it deserves awards for more than just flowers. Placing a gas station located on a safety roundabout in a residential area on the city’s gateway, Fairhope Avenue and 13, only two blocks from three other filling stations/convenience stores, certainly will be an American oddity; and altogether deserving of an Onion American Planning award. This is so bad in terms of safety negligence that it even beats building a fire station on a dead end road (Parker); or having an open sewer line regularly discharge into Mobile Bay, along with all of Trip Pittman and Tim Kant’s expensive BP anchors.

Baldwin County has recently been introduced to the traffic intersection known as a roundabout.” The modern roundabout is a beautiful thing. Traffic flow is improved, they look nice and they are safer than traditional intersections. In the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Status Report about Roundabouts, they cite research from the University of Maine that found a 39% reduction in crashes, a 76% decrease in injury-producing crashes, and a 90% decrease in collisions involving fatal or incapacitating injuries when studying a sample of 25 intersections turned into roundabouts.