The University of Maine is getting a roundabout.

Construction has begun at the intersection of Route 2 and Rangeley Road, what I think of as the back entrance to the University. During the summer, when the bulk of the students are gone, roadwork will kick into high gear.

On May 14, Rangeley Road will be closed, forcing motorized traffic to and from the University to use College Avenue. The bus route between the University and Old Town will be disrupted. But the end result, said Community Connector compliance officer Jeremy Gray, will be a much safer intersection that’s friendlier to cars, buses and bicycles.

“The buses often have a hard time making that left turn out of the University,” Gray said. “When the roundabout is completed, it will be a lot easier for them to stay on schedule.”

The bus from Bangor leaves Pickering Square at 15 minutes past the hour on weekdays from 7:15 am to 5:15 pm. It passes through downtown Orono, crosses the Stillwater River, and bears left on College Avenue, arriving at the Memorial Union on campus at 45 minutes past the hour. The bus then exits campus via Rangeley Road, turns left on Route 2, and continues on to Old Town, before returning to the Union on the half-hour, and continuing on to Bangor. The round trip takes nearly two hours.

But during busy times of day, that left turn has been problematic. Feeding that intersection are a gas station and convenience store, a coffee shop, a bank, traffic between Orono and Old Town, and a sprawling student housing development. Buses have been hung out to dry there for ten minutes or more. The construction has only made it worse.

There will likely be delays this summer, none of them the fault of the bus or its driver. Instead of leaving campus via Rangeley Road (which will be closed), the bus will have to backtrack out to College Avenue, turn left, turn left again on Route 2, and then drive right through the construction site. Route 2 will remain open, but at times will be reduced to a single lane.

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Many Americans are unfamiliar with roundabouts. Maine has twenty-two of them. Two are in Bangor. One is in Blue Hill, my old hometown, at the top of Tenney Hill, where four routes intersect. It was the site of several terrible crashes. I used to go flying down that hill on my bicycle, without a helmet. Those days are long gone. I’m thankful I survived them.

The Maine Department of Transportation targeted the Rangeley Road intersection for a roundabout because it saw a higher-than-expected number of crashes. During a recent two-year period, there were 24 reported crashes. Most, according to the student newspaper Maine Campus, were either rear-end or T-bone collisions.

The roundabout should make things better for bicyclists, too, once drivers learn to yield the lane to them on the approach. Roundabouts are designed to slow things down. They differ from rotaries, which are larger, and are approached at an oblique angle. Roundabouts have a smaller radius and are entered at right angles. In both cases, vehicles already in the circle have the right of way.

For a bicyclist, the proper way to approach a roundabout is to “control the lane” so that an impatient driver cannot pass you on either side. Using hand signals, make sure that drivers know where you’re going. The point of a roundabout is traffic calming. Instead of trying to beat a yellow light, drivers will have to slow down, temporarily, to the speed of a bicycle. At a dangerous crossroads this is a good thing.

The project should be finished in time for the start of classes in the fall. We’ll see what happens when the students return en masse. Roundabouts take some getting used to. In some places, the number of crashes went up after a roundabout replaced a traffic light. But only initially, and the crashes were far less severe.

I hope the roundabout helps the buses run on time. I hope it makes bicycling safer on that stretch of road. I hope it encourages drivers to slow down and drive more cautiously.

But the intersection was a problem because too many people used it to drive short distances they could easily cover by bus or bicycle. Too many people own too many cars. That’s the challenge of the Late Automobile Age, and this is a roundabout way of addressing it.

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