Photos: Todd Gill, Fayetteville Flyer
City officials are asking residents to weigh in on a temporary roundabout that was installed Thursday afternoon at the intersection of School Avenue and Spring Street in downtown Fayetteville.
The project is part of the city’s ongoing exploration of Tactical Urbanism, a concept that refers to low-cost, temporary changes to infrastructure intended to improve safety or other needs of area neighbors.
City staff and other area planners in November painted a temporary crosswalk and bike lane from the Razorback Greenway across the Nadine Baum Studios campus to West Avenue.
The intersection at School and Spring is normally a four-way stop, but officials said the area has been somewhat challenging for drivers, cyclists and others who tend to roll through without stopping due to obstructed sight lines.
The surrounding neighborhood includes a mix of houses and apartments, along with several businesses that make up the Dickson Street Entertainment District. The intersection is located on the Razorback Transit Brown route, and is part of an existing bikeway which connects the Razorback Greenway to the downtown square. It’s also about two blocks from a popular Ozark Transit bus stop.
Converting the intersection to a roundabout is one way of addressing that issue, but anything permanent would be a costly longterm investment, something the city isn’t comfortable doing without first exploring the idea. A temporary change, officials said, would help measure the effectiveness of the new approach while raising safety awareness and gathering public feedback.
A city crew added a mound of pavement to the middle of the intersection Thursday morning and replaced the stop signs with yield signs and roundabout direction indicators. City employees and volunteers gathered later in the day to paint the mound and add crosswalks.
The installation is scheduled to be removed in March.
A survey seeking feedback is set to open this week at surveymonkey.com/r/miniroundabout.
For more information about the installation, visit the city’s Facebook event page.
