NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The temporary traffic circles on Panorama Drive in Hutchinson are going away.
"We do intend to remove them tomorrow," City Manager Enrico Villegas said Tuesday. "We'll move forward with stop signs, locates have already been called in so all of that can just take place tomorrow."
Villegas said the issue was raised while they were already talking about the 43rd and Halstead issues in previous months.
"Some of them have come to council even before we started meeting with them," Villegas said. "They had shared with me that the city in the past had put white striping down on the roads and there was a traffic study that was done, but they've been complaining for over a year to try to get the city to do something."
As it turned out, because people were cutting across the wrong side of the traffic circles, it wasn't slowing traffic down as much as had been hoped.
"Our traffic consultants, our traffic engineers, they said that stop signs were not an advisable form of traffic calming," Villegas said. "You may not solve the problem by just putting in stop signs."
That is what they are going to try next, though and they will do that right away after the circles are removed.