The Selah Loop Road expansion project is right on schedule and expected to be finished by October. By August, the west side of the road will be paved and traffic will be transferred to that side.

The project is a $3 million, six-year county transportation improvement plan to widen the road 30 feet to the west. The project will add two lanes, sidewalks, curbs, streetlights, traffic signals at Goodlander and Selah Loop Roads, and a new roundabout at Gore Road.

Left turn pockets will be provided at McGonagle Road, and conduits for a future traffic signal will be underground.

Gary Ekstedt, County Roads Engineer, said that road contractors, Granite Northwest, are close to schedule, although some of the underground work has slowed them down.

Coordination with Fairpoint Communication and Pacific Power has gone well, he said. A row of telephone poles, on the west edge of the existing road, will be moved in the next few weeks. Pacific Power distribution lines and aerial crossings to serve houses on the west side will go underground. Most of the telephone lines will be underground and cable TV lines will cross underground. Power poles on the east side of the road will remain. Ekstedt said it was too expensive to relocate all the lines to underground.

“It’s a compromise,” he said.

A standard size roundabout will be open for traffic at Gore Road and Selah Loop Road by the end of the month. It is designed to accommodate 60 foot tractor-trailer rigs and is designed for speeds of 20 miles per hour.

The center will be landscaped and a concentric truck apron with thicker concrete will surround the landscaped center. The apron is designed so that the rear wheels of a tractor-trailer will ride up on the curb, Ekstedt said.

“Through computer simulation we’ve run all the standard truck combinations,” he said. “It will work out well.”

Ekstedt said drivers will have to get comfortable with the roundabout and that in the beginning drivers will stop as if they are at a four-way stop.

A roundabout is a better choice for the Gore Road intersection than the T-intersection because of the slope of the road coming from Selah Loop into Selah, especially on snowy mornings, he said.

Roundabouts handle the random nature of traffic better than a signal.

“With a signal, traffic cues up and platoons people through,” he said.

Or you wait. Cars cued at a traffic signal wait the same amount of time for one car as for 18, he said.

“You won’t have right angle crashes or high speed T-bone crashes,” Ekstedt said.

Saturday, the Washington State Department of Transportation held a demonstration in the SunDome parking lot, demonstrating how a two-line roundabout works to “dispel common misunderstandings,” Ekstedt said.

Jeff Minnick, DOT project engineer for three roundabouts at the Valley Mall Boulevard exit in Union Gap, said the Gore Road roundabout is designed to give people coming off Gore Road a better angle when entering Selah Loop.

A basalt landscape feature in the center of the landscaping circle, will provide a barrier to drivers approaching from Gore Road to remind people to slow down and enter the roundabout at a reasonable speed. Roundabouts have greater safety benefits than a signalized intersection, Minnick  said.

Minnick said there are 92 roundabouts being used in Washington with plans to build more.

According to a DOT press release, the benefits include slower speeds, 15 to 20 miles per hour, elimination of traffic signal lights that stop traffic and force people to wait for a green light, and elimination of conflicting left turns.

Roundabouts also eliminate the hardware, maintenance, and electrical costs associated with traffic signals, saving an average of $5,000 per year.

Minnick said studies have shown that roundabouts improve traffic flow and reduce injury crashes by as much as 75 percent.

Several case studies have shown a 20 percent reduction in traffic delays by replacing a traffic signal with a modern roundabout. Even when the power goes out, you can safely drive through a roundabout, Minnick said.