After running into unanimous opposition to placing a roundabout near the entrance to Hermiston Foods on South Highway 395, the Hermiston City Council met with the Oregon Department of Transportation and got it to agree to remove that request from the city’s Transportation System Plan.
ODOT had made the request earlier to have a roundabout on Highway 395 be put in the city’s transportation plan. The city council held a hearing on Feb. 22 to amend its plan by putting a roundabout in it. ODOT says roundabouts make high-speed roadways safer than traffic signals because motorists can’t “run” a roundabout like they can with stop lights.
The request did not mean ODOT was definitely going to put a roundabout on the highway, but wanted it included in the city’s plan just in case. At the Feb. 22 hearing, public and council opposition to the proposed amendment was fierce enough for the city to continue it at Monday’s meeting. In the interim, the city met with ODOT in an effort to get the roundabout excluded from the plan.
In the city’s favor was opposition to the roundabout from Ranch & Home, which plans to build a new store along South Highway 395. The state, not wanting to curtail economic development in the city, went along with taking out its request for a roundabout and, instead, a conventional traffic light will be put in the plan.
Truck driver Dave Coffey was among the vocal opponents of the roundabout and he said Monday night he was pleased to see it removed from the city’s plan.
“I’m really happy now with the plan,” he told the council. A roundabout, he said, would cost about three times the amount it would take to install a traffic signal. Coffey and others also believed a roundabout on a high-speed roadway would be unsafe.
Mayor Dave Drotzmann said this was an example of local government listening to its constituents.
“Now, if only it worked that well on the national level,” he said.
