For those of you that travel down Hutchison Drive, the danger of getting run over by a car has (hopefully) gone way down.
Conversely, your chances of getting blindsided by a bad biker have skyrocketed.
What was formerly an intersection on Hutchison Drive between Sciences Lecture Hall and Bioletti Way has been transformed into a roundabout.
This has some positives and negatives.
First, most people didn’t quite stop at those stop signs anyway unless there was a visible police officer roaming the area. The roundabout will at least instill some sort of system that people can follow.
Which brings us to the second point. We’ve already expressed our frustration and offered suggestions on how to not be a fatal threat on the bike paths. This shouldn’t be an issue now, 5 weeks into the year, but people are still reckless going into those roundabouts. Follow the rules.
One of the impressive things about this new feature is the time it took to complete construction. The project only lasted a couple days and was finished by Jan. 22.
This makes us wonder why it takes so long to complete some of the other construction projects on campus. If anything short of a tunnel to the other side of the world results from the work next to the soccer field and over on Hoagland Drive, it should be considered a waste of time.
But that’s another issue.
For now, we celebrate the small victories of the roundabout. If nothing else, it eliminates another stop sign where police will be lurking, or it can serve as a training course for helpless freshman cyclists.
