 Michael LeCroy, project manager for the Shelburne Road Circle. Actually, what's the proper name of this project? We're calling it the Shelburne Street Roundabout Project. And how long has this project been in the works? This project's been in the works since 2009. So we've had a program project of V-Trans looking at designing a single-lane roundabout since 2009-2010. And you said that the city of Burlington has been eyeing this intersection for a longer time. That's correct. The city has looked into doing some sort of improvements at this location since at least 1998. And ever since then, the intersection has landed itself on the Vermont High Crash Location list. So it's been a long time coming. And when you say high crash location, what are the statistics? So to get on the high crash location list, there needs to be at least five vehicular collisions every five years, so averaging one per year. And at this particular location, it's ranked in usually in the high 40s, low 50s. And it's about 50 collisions every five years. So 10 collisions a year is too much? Yes, that's about 10 times as much as it would take to get onto the high crash location list. And how much is this project, which you're going to describe, going to cost after it's said and done? When we're all looking at probably about $8 million. And is that just asking in the world of Vermont Transportation, $8 million is worth offsetting 10 crashes a year? Well, it's a little high to be honest. But in this particular case, there's a lot of other factors that need to be improved simultaneously, particularly, we're trying to improve conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists. We have a fair amount of contaminated ground soil and groundwater underneath the intersection, as at one point, there were four gas stations at various locations around this intersection. We also found that there's some archeological evidence that needs to be excavated here and the stormwater, frankly, there's been no active stormwater treatment at this location, so we're trying to take this opportunity to improve that as well. Well, that would be important since this is at the bottom of the hill section. That's correct. During our hydrological analysis of this intersection, there's a huge amount of water that comes down these slopes and these streets, some of which the existing storm system can't handle. A lot of the infrastructure underneath is old, some of it's 80, 90, 100 years old, some of it, a lot of it is undersized, so we're going to take this opportunity to improve that infrastructure as well. What archeological evidence have you found? The University of Vermont has found some artifacts that indicate that there may have been some Native American toolmaking at this location, particularly in front of Christ the King School. We haven't actually extracted those yet. UVM will be coming in probably later this summer to excavate those items. This, I understand, is a two-year project. Is that right? Yes. This will be two full calendar years and it could potentially, so it's like two-and-a-half construction seasons give or take. We expect to be done somewhere in the mid-2023 timeframe. Well, being a person who drives through this intersection all the time, I hope I live to see that ending, but tell us what's going to happen in year one. So year one, what you're going to see is utility relocations. So there's about seven miles of buried utilities underneath this intersection. They all need to be either upgraded, replaced, relocated. So a lot of what you're going to see is going to happen underneath the roadways and streets. You may not see a lot of physical changes in the landscape other than what we're seeing today is tree removal. So a lot of it's going to be buried in underground. And a lot of that will occur during the first construction season. And then what kind of disruption can people expect while you're doing that? So traffic is obviously very heavy at this location. High speeds are frequent. So traffic is going to be a huge impact. We're asking folks to not necessarily go out of their way to avoid this area. We will do our best to accommodate everybody that needs to come through here. If you can avoid it, please do for the safety of the workers and the users of the facilities. There'll be some intermittent utilities, shutoffs or disconnections. But those will be announced in advance. We could see some blasting of ledge that's buried underneath the roadways and streets here as well. So that could be intrusive to folks. And of course, this is a residential neighborhood as well. So we are trying to minimize how much night work that we do. Last night we had to do some night work just because we had to set up the traffic package that you see today. And we couldn't do that during daytime traffic hours. So we're trying to minimize noise and light and those sort of impacts to the residences of the neighborhood. But obviously it's construction. And so there is inherently some noise and light that goes along with that. So we're trying our best to balance the needs of the users and the disruptions to the neighborhood. Are you, I mean I imagine when you ask people to avoid this, Pine Street is one of the roads that they'll be traveling on. Is there going to be any mitigation? Pine Street's pretty rough, especially that intersection at Maple. Yes. We expect that there might be some users that decide to take Pine Street. That is the most obvious, if you want to call it, detour route. It's not an official detour route. The intersection here at the old rotary can handle all the traffic if everybody decided to drive through it. It's just that if you are looking to avoid any sort of delay, then Pine Street might be a better solution for you. We looked at it, Pine Street does have the adequate capacity to take on more traffic. Obviously it's a city street. So we ask users of these streets and Pine Street and in any of the other side streets, neighborhood streets to obviously be mindful and drive cautiously and carefully. So what happens in year two? So in year two, that is where you're going to see the bulk of the changes. You're going to see the roundabout start to form. You're going to see islands pop up and you're going to see some landscaping, street lighting, some signage and obviously pavement and pavement markings. So that's going to be the bulk of the street work in year two. And how much bigger is this circle going to be? Oh, the circle is gone. The rotary, the old rotary, what was called colloquially the rotary, it was just a raised island, was removed last night to accommodate this new temporary traffic pattern that you see. And the proposed roundabout is going to be significantly larger than that. And that's going to be to accommodate all sizes of vehicles. But it's also strategically sized such that pedestrians and bicyclists will be more visible when they're trying to cross the streets, for instance. So the final distance of the single lane roundabout is going to be 130 feet. So that's on the outside, so diameter. That's pretty big. It's big, but it'll fit. And the streets really do lend itself to that sort of geometry. So it's really going to be a great fit for this location. So majestic is not going to need to change their footprint? So the majestic parking lot will be repaved, but it's not going to change in terms of geometry. We are going to have a separate exit driveway for them to enter the roundabout. And but other than that, they're not going to be terribly impacted. And at what point did the state of Vermont conclude that rotaries were more efficient than intersections like this or four-way intersections? Because they're popping up all over the state. Yeah, they're popping up. We're actively promoting roundabouts for intersections that have safety issues. But across the country, since the the 80s and the 90s, engineers and departments of transportation have recognized that roundabouts have huge safety implications, just in the fact that they slow traffic down, they enhance visibility for users, and just the numbers, the statistics that we've seen in crash reductions and the severity of crashes, which is actually an important point here, is a huge function of installing a roundabout. So Vermont's a little late to the party probably, but we're going to do our best to try to catch up. Well, part of the problem with the rotary is no one really understood the etiquette of using the rotary. So it didn't really operate like a roundabout in the past. That's very true. That is a huge reason why it had the safety issues that it did. Taking a left turn was very tight. And it was very confusing because, you know, lots of wide open, a sea of pavement out there, and pavement markings don't always effectively control drivers, especially those that are speeding through. So this larger geometry that we're going to that we're proposing and going to be installing is going to be a huge improvement over what was there before. So while we're talking about roundabouts, how satisfied are you with the Wynusky roundabout? Ah, Wynusky, we as engineers don't call it a roundabout. It doesn't function as a modern roundabout would like you'll see in this location in a couple years. We call it a circulator. It has a bunch of other names. A lot of people do mistakenly call it as a roundabout in that traffic inside the circulator has right away and people trying to enter has to yield to those folks. And those are really only where the similarities end. And other than that, that traffic pattern in Wynusky is unique. And it's not something that we are looking to replicate throughout the state. So if people have questions, I know you've been sending out updates. How can they sign up for those updates? Where should they go for more information, Mike? Sure. So if you go to the project website, I don't have the link off top of my head. If you Google or Yahoo or whatever into a search engine Shelburne Street roundabout, it should be one of the first things that pop up. There's some great videos, tutorials on how to navigate a roundabout, what this project is trying to accomplish. And like you were mentioning, you can sign up for traffic alerts and project updates that are emailed. And that's really going to be your one-stop source for anything this project related. There's also a telephone number that you can call the project team and ask questions if you have. And we respond as quick as we possibly can to folks. Okay. I think we've covered a lot of ground. Anything people... You want to make sure people know before we close? Really, just if you're driving through, slow down, be cautious of the workers in the streets. There's still going to be pedestrians and bicycle usage throughout the work zone. So please slow down, be aware of your surroundings and be safe. Mike LaCroix, thank you so much. Thank you.