McKenzie Towne's notorious roundabout is getting a redesign

One of the largest and most notorious roundabouts in Calgary is getting a new look in a bid to make the traffic circle safer for motorists and pedestrians.

The McKenzie Towne roundabout is being reconfigured from a conventional two-lane layout to a spiral design, according to a city web page and the area’s city councillor.

The new configuration will guide drivers into the correct lane before entering, and keep them in that lane until their intended exit.

The goal is to make movement through the roundabout easier to understand and more predictable.

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The roundabout currently has five different access and exit roads, including McKenzie Towne Boulevard, McKenzie Towne Gate, Prestwick Boulevard and Inverness Gate. Some of the roads have two lanes, while others have four.

Area Coun. Mike Jamieson said the layout is confusing, and the traffic circle has generated hundreds of complaints to the city and his Ward 12 office over the years.

There are contradicting views around how the traffic circle is supposed to be used, which Jamieson said creates a lot of near misses and collisions.

“If you spent two hours there during rush hour on any day, I’m very confident you’d see a near miss,” he said. “The police know about it, the city knows about it, there are a ton of complaints and just a lack of understanding around how it’s supposed to operate.”

The McKenzie Towne traffic circle was installed in 1999 and was one of Canada’s first multi-lane roundabouts, according to a city web page.

The same online page notes that roundabouts tend to lower the likelihood and severity of collisions by slowing vehicles and ensuring they travel in the same direction.

Collisions that do occur at roundabouts result in lower-severity outcomes, since right-angle collisions are eliminated and speeds are dramatically reduced compared to a conventional intersection, it states.

Reviews show the number of collisions in the McKenzie Towne roundabout is consistently lower than the number of collisions at comparable four-way traffic signals, the city web page states. And of the collisions that occur in the traffic circle, less than four per cent result in injury, compared to nearly 10 per cent at conventional four-way intersections.