The reader will be forgiven for failing to notice when on a hot sleepy Wednesday afternoon last July the Ukiah City Council quietly voted to approve a plan for six roundabouts to be constructed on Perkins and Gobbi streets over the next few years. The council’s unanimous approval came at the close of a workshop it held “to help create a vision for improving the Perkins and Gobbi Street corridors.”
A post on the City of Ukiah’s Facebook page five days earlier announced that city staff had been working with Adventist Health’s so-called Blue Zones Project to produce a draft plan for redesigning those streets: “Some of the predominant features of this vision include roundabouts, wider sidewalks, bike lanes, landscaped medians, and additional trees and landscaping.”
The AH vision includes construction of six new roundabouts, four on Perkins and two on Gobbi, bringing the total number of roundabouts planned for Ukiah to seven. A separate roundabout at
Low Gap and Bush St is already “funded” and “in the design phase,” according to Public Works Director Tim Erickson.
The new street plan for Perkins includes a pair of nearly adjacent roundabouts, one at Pomeroy and one at Orchard. The proximity of the circles was a concern for some workshop participants, who may have worried that motorists could become trapped in an M.C. Escher-style infinity loop at that location, causing longer traffic delays and more severe existential crises.
City leaders are promoting the AH roundabout plan as part of its ‘complete streets’ approach to urban planning, which “aims to make travel safe and accessible for all users, including bicyclists, pedestrians, motorists, transit vehicles, and people of all ages and abilities,” according to the City.
Unfortunately, the plan for six additional roundabouts approved unanimously (with one council member not present) on July 19 is completely inappropriate given Ukiah’s relatively low traffic volume and the total absence of pedestrian safety concerns. The plan adds risk for bicyclists contrary to its claims and places at least two centuries-old valley oak trees on the chopping block.
Incomplete Streets
Roundabouts help ease motor vehicle traffic and reduce motor vehicle accidents; most studies indicate that they also add risk for bicyclists.
For example, a 2021 study by Utah State University funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation concludes: “Although converting an intersection to a roundabout may reduce [motor vehicle] crashes overall, some research from northern Europe suggests that roundabouts may actually increase the frequency of bicycle crashes.”
A 2011 Australian study finds: “Roundabouts experience fewer and less severe vehicle crashes than typical intersections. Yet this safety benefit does not extend to bicycles.”
In his presentation, Blue Zones LLC employee Dan Burden argued the opposite. He described an intersection he helped plan near a college in Maui– a locale with ten times the population of Ukiah– that had already secured state funding to build a dedicated pedestrian overpass but at his urging opted instead for a roundabout because “[an overpass is] not going to address the safety issue, nor is it likely that the students would use the overpass.” He told his clients, “Why not put [the money] into rebuilding the intersection?”
If Mr. Burden has evidence that roundabouts are safer for pedestrians and bicyclists than dedicated pedestrian overpasses, he cagily withheld that material from his audience at the City Council workshop. His claim flies in the face of common sense: How can walking or riding on a completely separate elevated walkway be less safe than walking or riding on the surface near circulating motor vehicle traffic?
The Ukiah Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan approved in 2016 contains a section on ‘‘complete streets’ which states that “streets are only complete when they address the needs of all modes of transportation, including walking and bicycling.”
Since the evidence indicates roundabouts lead to greater risk for cyclists, the city should not move forward with a plan to build them at all, much less under the guise of benefitting that community.
If the city wants to promote infrastructure that improves safety for bicyclists and pedestrians there are proven models to do so: Paved dedicated (no motor vehicle) walking and biking paths; buffered bike lanes; elevated walkways for pedestrians and cyclists.
The AH plan mentions buffered bike lanes for Gobbi and Perkins but does not specify that all of the planned roundabouts will include a buffered bike lane. Considering the small dimensions of some of the intersections we can presume there won’t be space for buffered bike lanes in most of the planned roundabouts. None of the other proven safety measures for pedestrians and cyclists are included in the plan.
‘A very good fit’
Describing the roundabout planned for the intersection of Gobbi and Orchard Streets– the exact location where county social services director Dr. Doug Rosoff was run over by a construction truck and killed while riding his bicycle in 2012 and a mile from where Covelo farmer and activist Xamuel Lara was run over and killed on his bicycle in 2018, also by a construction truck– Burden explained that the new construction would require several “legacy trees” be removed in the process.
During the question portion of the workshop Burden called the plan “a very good fit for this intersection.”
“Now, the big issue is you got some legacy [oak] trees, and if you were to put a roundabout in this intersection, the trees would have to be sacrificed,” he said.
When Mayor Rodin asked if there was a way to build a smaller roundabout at Gobbi and Orchard and in doing so avoid removing the trees, Burden was unequivocal:
“The challenge is for the engineer … My engineer does everything he can to save trees. If there was a way to do it he would have pulled it off but he just couldn’t. He said Dan, we’re just going to have to give up on this one. So no, I’m sorry, we cannot.”
It appears that for Blue Zones LLC longevity is to be cherished in humans but not so much in trees, especially when the trees stand in the way of constructing a traffic circle … even one that is absolutely not needed.
Ukiah’s Ur Circle
City leaders hope to launch Ukiah’s circular frenzy by constructing a roundabout at Bush St. and Low Gap Rd, presumably to address the brief periodic motor vehicle congestion that occurs on Low Gap at the high school’s drop off and pickup times. During questioning after Burden’s presentation Public Works Director Tim Erickson mentioned that the roundabout planned for that intersection is funded and in the “design phase.”
That statement took me by surprise.
In April 2016 Walk and Bike Mendocino solicited input for a letter commenting on a proposed draft of the Ukiah Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan. I was contacted due to my leadership role in the Ukiah Bicycle Kitchen and I contributed my thoughts.
Our letter was sent to the city clerk to be included in the electronic agenda packet provided to the City Council. For some reason it never made it into the 586-page packet. Our letter addressed several concerns about features of the draft, one of which was a roundabout planned for Bush and Low Gap.
We wrote:
[R}egarding the roundabout proposed for Bush and Low Gap; if a roundabout is needed, it is needed to decrease congestion. Traffic congestion is not a problem for walking or biking and the current four way stop is not dangerous for pedestrians or bicyclists. Therefore we do not believe the roundabout should be included in the plan.
At a meeting of the Ukiah Planning Commission two months earlier, on February 24, Neil Davis, head of Walk & Bike Mendocino and current Director of Community Services for the city of Ukiah, said he “is of the opinion the matter of roundabouts should not be in the Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan.”
Davis added, “Having roundabouts in Ukiah would not work because of the layout of Ukiah and the existing configuration of city streets,” and he “does not support the installation of a roundabout at Bush Street and Low Gap Road.”
At the same meeting the commission heard from cycling advocate Tom Zimlich, who noted that “successful roundabouts with similar volume and four entries and four exits would have substantial distance between entry and exit point.”
“I do not think the Low Gap/N. Bush roundabout will work because the intersection is not big enough to handle the volume, slow the vehicles and safely transit bikes and pedestrians. … To appropriately slow non-turning vehicles, the center median would have to be huge, taking up most of the intersection.”
“With the volume of traffic at this intersection, especially during schools start/finish time, a roundabout in England would have a separate structure for bikes and pedestrians, i.e. an overpass or an underpass, or a cross-walk (with a traffic signal) about 20 meters from the intersection. Otherwise, pedestrians would not be able to safely cross the street,” Zimlich said.
In spite of these concerns the City Council unanimously adopted a Bike and Pedestrian Plan that evening which included mention of one roundabout:
The City has secured funding to reconstruct the intersection of Low Gap Road and N. Bush Street to provide a modern single-lane roundabout with pedestrian and bicycle accommodation, including median-protected crossings and bicycle ramps. This project will relieve congestion and improve safety at a key intersection in Ukiah.
Zimlich disagreed: “In general roundabouts are a good idea when pedestrian traffic can be routed away from the intersection. When pedestrians are crossing at an intersection, a roundabout is generally not a good idea … [I]t seems to me that significant infrastructure would need to be put in place to ensure all users remain safe.”
From Blue Zones to Green
Seven years later the city appears to be entrusting a trending lifestyle brand to plan our streets. We have reason to wonder if its trust is well placed.
When Mayor Rodin asked whether the roundabout plan for Gobbi and Perkins would increase commercial development, Burden replied, “You increase property values by 800 percent.” He raised a further eyebrow when he declared that Ukiah’s State Street “is one of my favorite streets in the nation.”
After a short public comment period, when the council seemed uncertain how to proceed, City manager Sage Sangiacomo gave the members a nudge: “If you are ready to point staff in this direction then we could begin working on opportunities and a plan to come back to council about how we recommend engaging to get us off the ground … .”
After a couple of false starts the mayor formulated a motion: “That we direct staff to move toward implementing the concepts presented today, and that we begin as soon as possible with the public engagement process.” Referring to the need to acquire land and establish new right-of-ways to accommodate the roundabouts, Council Member Doug Crane added “And Caltrans,” and Mayor Rodin said, “And Caltrans.” That motion was unanimously approved.
Four weeks after Burden’s workshop the city included a consulting agreement for Burden and his team on its consent calendar, and that agreement was approved.
Those who wonder how many roundabouts might be in the final plan may be relieved to know they can direct their questions to Michael Wallwork, one of four members of the ‘Built Environment Team’ whose title in the agreement is ‘Roundabouts Expert.’
It is doubtful Burden and Wallwork can make a convincing case for a single roundabout in Ukiah, much less seven.
What is not in dispute is that Adventist Health’s non-profit– founded on fictional so-called ‘blue zones’ where humans purportedly live longer and better than anywhere else– is quite popular and is also … bringing in the green.
