Lake County’s Public Works and Transportation Committee was unusually crowded last Wednesday as a group of residents voiced their concerns about the planned multi-lane roundabout at the Hunt Club and Stearns School roads intersection in Warren Township. The project will be the second roundabout of its scale in Lake County, and is expected to cost about $15 million, including drainage improvements and the installation of a bike path. Kenneth Malek, a longtime area resident who has held several homeowners association positions over the years, discussed his and his neighbor’s issues with the roundabout proposal as it stands. A crowd of residents at the Lake County Public Works and Transportation Committee meeting last Wednesday. They raised concerns with the proposed Hunt Club and Stearns School roads roundabout. (Joe States/Lake County News-Sun) Malek said they’re worried the roundabout will be less safe for pedestrians, bicyclists, and horseback riders — there’s a horse riding school at the southwest corner of the intersection — claiming it will reduce traffic intervals for an already over-trafficked stretch of road. Residents also had aesthetic concerns, worrying the proposed overhead signage would be “putting freeway signs right at our doorstep and in our view corridors,” he said. They want something “beautiful” and “well-integrated into the countryside,” as seen with smaller, single-lane roundabouts elsewhere in the county. Residents have worked to keep a “country atmosphere” in the area, Malek said, including no street lighting, minimal street signs and no above-ground power lines. While Malek said he understands the broader aspects of the project are likely to move forward, he hopes to work with staff and county leadership to provide some solutions to residents’ concerns. “I think Illinois drivers aren’t used to them, but we have to place our trust in the hands of our government officials,” he said. “They’re telling us this is the way to go, even though there may be some initial accidents.” Malek also proposed installing button-activated, signalized pedestrian-crossing paths, as seen elsewhere in the county. Responding to concerns Assistant county engineer Kevin Carrier pushed back on the traffic-interval claim. A gap analysis of the spacing of cars at the roundabout showed positive results, he said. “There’s a calculation they can do for how long it takes someone on horseback, or walking, or a bike to get across the road, and they found with the roundabout there are adequate gaps, actually more than there are today and under future conditions,” he said. Traffic is projected to grow in the area meaning, “if we do nothing, it’s just going to continue to get more congested,” Carrier said. It already sees roughly 30,000 cars a day, he added. While concerns about crossing safety are understandable, “the data and numbers don’t really show there’s going to be safety issues,” Carrier said. The intersection had been flagged for backups and safety concerns, and the roundabout was chosen instead of a signalized intersection for its benefits, from traffic calming to a significant reduction in conflict points, or locations where multiple traffic paths intersect and cars can collide. According to Lake County staff, at a regular intersection of two four-lane roads, there are 52 conflict points, 36 of which are the more dangerous “crossing conflict points,” which can lead to the most severe and injury-prone types of crashes. In comparison, the proposed roundabout has a total of 24 points, with just eight crossing conflict points. The criticized overhead signage is usually “best practice” for safety, Carrier said, but there were plenty of design alterations, including size, decoration and location, that could be made to be more aesthetically pleasing. He pointed to other completed roundabouts, which included native plantings and other decorative touches, as examples of how they could fit the roundabout into the area’s rural aesthetic. “We’ve gotten a lot of compliments for that, so we felt it would fit within the kind of surrounding character and be a nice gateway from the rural suburbs into the more commercial corridors,” Carrier said. With the project still in the design phase and construction still three years out, now is the time for such feedback from the neighborhood, and Carrier said county officials “appreciated hearing” from residents. Moving the intersection Malek proposed shifting the roundabout roughly 200 to 300 feet towards the southeast corner of the current intersection, arguing that would have several benefits. Left turns out of the horse riding stable would be safer, Malek argued, and signage and lighting impacts would be minimized, as it would then sit behind the existing berms. Carrier was uncertain if moving the roundabout was possible, however, and the proposal would require some investigation. “It’s tough to tell. Roundabouts, they’re very finicky to geometric change, when you move them around,” he said. “You can slide things around a bit, but at first flush that seems pretty extreme. There’s a lot of tight curves and stuff.” In addition, existing structures and trees at the corner would “open up other impacts.” Malek said he and other residents planned to continue talking at meetings and working with Lake County. With the potential impacts, it is important residents express their concerns, he said. “It’ll draw even more traffic, and we think that the local taxpayers deserve a say in both the safety implications and the aesthetics,” Malek said.