A new roundabout opened earlier this month here in San Antonio:
(Photo by
Scott Ball on The Rivard Report)
It replaces a completely unwieldy downtown intersection...
...with a
whirligig:
"
Downtown Roundabout Set to Open Monday Near Central Library" -
The Rivard ReportCuriously, the article ended on this paragraph:
Once construction on the project has finished, Dorsey said a public art piece will be added to the middle of the roundabout. Discussions continue on what shape that project will take, Dorsey said, but one thing is certain: "It’s not a fountain."I did not understand the ironic importance of it
not being a fountain. Was a public fountain too stereotypical of a roundabout ? Would it be inappropriate for a region prone to drought? Is it too high maintenance as a water feature with additional liabilities for health safety?
Turns out San Antonio has some experience with water fountains in the Olmos Park roundabout. Olmos Park is an inner suburban enclave that in 2008 decided to beautify its decade-old roundabout at Olmos Circle with a grand Spanish-style fountain. It was also hoped that the heavy travertine landmark would deter drivers from just driving over and through the roundabout center. $100,000 in donations was raised by the community for the elegant
Olmos Park Fountain, a new symbol of the city at the center of its business district.
(Photo by
Cobaltski on Flickr.)
It didn't work...drivers still tried to go straight through. Over the next four years, the fountain would be hit over 25 times by speeding and drunk drivers barreling down McCullough Avenue. One incident dubbed the "St. Valentines Day Massacre" saw a hurtling drunk driver hit a traffic island, sending his vehicle airborne into the fountain, and then further crashing and flipping over into a corner business. The Olmos Park city government finally gave up continuously repairing the fountain, and, in 2012, the fountain was unceremoniously demolished.
(Photo by
Lisa Kranz for The San Antonio Express-News.)
"
What a roundabout way to lose a landmark" - San Antonio Express-News
An embarrassing waste in a troublesome traffic circle. Before the roundabout, it was a 5-way intersection with signal lights, but that created a traffic bottleneck and there were still speeding and drunk drivers crashing through, bringing fatalities. At least the fountain crashes didn't lead to any deaths, though the airborne drunkard was seriously injured.
Two years before the fountain was dismantled, it was thought to redevelop the circle and surround commercial center into a plaza:
Sigh...thanks to a few bad apples, we can't have good things. The roundabout now has at its center a small mound covered with native shrubs.
I have an hunch regarding the Olmos Park Fountain's failing. Although it was protected by large block-like bollards on its approaches, the actual circle up to the fountain is flat...
(Photo by
Terry Johnson on Texas Escapes.)
...whereas the replacement shrubbery is on a shallow mound with obstructed sightlines. The raised curvature of the mounds may actually deflect wayward drivers jumping the circle's curb and also buffer the impact should drivers smash past the bollards and into the center. Additionally, the fountain was designed with a low profile so as not to obstruct sightlines of some of the Spanish-styled surrounding buildings, but that may have also lowered its registered visibility to approaching intoxicated drivers. It may also be that the initial reason for installing the fountain--to stop drunk and speeding drivers from barreling over the roundabout--was itself futile.
Lastly, this fountain was not aligned in line-of-sight of the main roads, which actually change elevation and veer at the last moment into the curvature of the roundabout. Speeders see and think that they have a straight run until its too late:
Ah well, not too far away is another local landmark roundabout, the Blanco Roundabout and its 28-foot obelisk, "The Beacon," fashioned by sculptor Ángel Rodríguez-Díaz in 2008 for the inner suburb of Beacon Hill:
Patterned with Art Deco motifs referencing the architecture of the neighborhood, the hollow obelisk is actually a giant steel luminaria, lit at night into a towering patterned lantern:
(Photo by
Jack Morgan on Texas Public Radio.)
Interestingly, while the obelisk was erect in the same year as the Olmos Park Fountain, it had only been hit by drivers twice in the same time period as the fountain's 25 hits. The base of the obelisk reportedly suffered only cosmetic damage. It's on a mound, has direct line-of-sight when seen from the road, and also has a narrower profile.
Blanco Road is an old main that leads from San Antonio out the neighboring city and county of Blanco to our far north, but I was curious why this portion of the road got a roundabout, as there are other major crossing roads nearby that are merely large intersections with signals, so I peeked on Google Earth:
Ah ha, this residential crossing road is one of few in the grid that also crosses past the highway to the west as well as a rail line to the east, making it one of the connecting entries into and out of Beacon Hill. Interestingly, with its traffic splitting islands pointing to the cardinal directions, the obelisk is also a giant sundial.
Hopefully, these will inspire our own SimCity roundabouts.
