Roundabouts not controversial in one city

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on roundabouts. This story features the city where residents roll in circles and quality-of-life rules above all else. Part 2 will look at North County.

Carmel, Ind. Mayor Jim Brainard has been a long-time supporter of roundabouts and his city of more than 100,000 residents has only one stoplight. Courtesy photo

NORTH COUNTY — Forty years ago, an idea lodged itself inside the mind of a soon-to-be small-town mayor, and it forever changed the trajectory of his city.

Jim Brainard is now the seven-term Republican mayor of Carmel, Ind., and was elected in 1996 with a vision for his small town to improve quality of life, develop the city’s economy, reduce traffic congestion, emissions and much more.

Brainard’s vision, and goals, were based on roundabouts. The city now has 151 roundabouts and five more are funded and in the construction pipeline, he said in an interview with North County Pipeline.

In North County, the installation and implementation of single- and multi-lane roundabouts, traffic circles and other forms are gaining steam as cities look to mimic Carmel’s traffic success.

Those plans centered on a strategy of deploying roundabouts, mini-roundabouts and traffic circles to reduce congestion and streamline the city’s traffic corridors. Since Brainard installed the first roundabouts in 1997, the city has blossomed and become famous for its citywide transportation system. Today, Carmel only has one traffic light and averages just two deaths per 100,000 residents per year, which is 10 fewer than the national average.

“I was over in England and saw the roundabouts,” he said when he attended the University of Oxford in the 1980s. “So, I asked a lot of questions (to city consultants and staff after he was elected). ‘Why do we have all these stoplights? I saw them in England, and they seem to work.’ And the answer was ‘this is just the way we do it,’ and no one could give me an answer.”

He made his way up to Purdue University engineering library to pull articles on roundabouts and began to challenge the consulting engineers. Brainard said he discovered the engineering consultants were confusing roundabouts with traffic circles.

From there, he went full throttle on installations, along with the city putting out aggressive public outreach campaigns to teach residents how to drive in them.