Another roundabout planned for Sisters

Another roundabout is in Sisters future, along with other plans to improve traffic flow and transportation in and through town.

Eighteen months worth of work on the City's Transportation Plan (TSP) refinement is drawing to a close. The Sisters Planning Commission reviewed the revised text and project maps at their April 19 workshop.

Four specific issues have been the focus in this refinement process:

• Circulation on the east side of town, including Highway 20/126 intersection improvements;

• Near- and long-term improvements to Highway 20/Locust Street and Barclay Drive/Locust Street;

• Realignment of Barclay Drive corridor;

• Revision to bicycle and pedestrian system plans.

Working with the Public Advisory Committee (PAC), Oregon Department of Transportation, Deschutes County, and the public, City staff and consultant Kittelson and Associates developed the draft TSP refinement document.

A public hearing for the TSP amendment is scheduled for the May 17 Planning Commission meeting where public testimony will be heard.

The proposed long-term improvement at the Highway 20/126 intersection is for a two-lane roundabout to meet the future needs at the junction, combining the intersection with Buckaroo Trail into the FivePine campus, and allowing the truck scales to remain in their current location.

The roundabout would be built on the current Oregon State Parks triangle of land between Highway 20/126 and would impact some of the new spaces just approved in the Sisters Mobile Home Park.

This is a project that is anywhere from five to 15 years out. The roundabout as proposed would probably have a footprint half again as big as the one at Barclay/US20.

The intersection at Highway 20/Locust is an ongoing problem well known to Sisters residents, many of whom simply avoid the intersection. A near-term solution, with a relatively low price tag, would be the installation of a "mini" roundabout, which requires no additional right-of-way acquisition. With a lifespan of eight to 10 years, it would be fully mountable by large semi-trucks, allowing them to use the alternate route through town on Barclay and Locust, with ease of entry back onto Highway 20. It would have about 80 percent capacity of a large single-lane roundabout, allowing people to enter the intersection more easily while slowing down traffic entering town.

There are three possible long-term solutions for the Highway 20/Locust intersection, all involving some type of roundabout, which would cost much more than the immediate "mini" and require land acquisition and disruptive construction.

In order to encourage freight traffic to utilize the alternate route along Barclay, a near-term improvement would include a realignment of the Barclay Avenue corridor to allow for a continuous three-lane road with turn lanes for entering and exiting traffic. Some small right-of-way purchases would be required to eliminate the current curves on

Barclay.

At the intersection of Barclay and Locust, the traffic entering and exiting Barclay would have the right-of-way to continue without stopping. Traffic coming south on Camp Polk Road/Locust would have to stop before proceeding. In phase two of the realignment, a bike/pedestrian multi-use path could be constructed beside the roadway.

As traffic increases at that intersection, construction of a roundabout would allow for increased capacity and become a viable, acknowledged alternate truck

route.

There are plans to make Washington Avenue a bike boulevard with marked bike lanes and parallel parking, as well as bike paths on the east side of town all the way to the city limits.

There is also the recognized need for increased pedestrian connections in the downtown core, with more sidewalks on streets like Washington and Adams.

Other minor refinements to the TSP involve some updated cost estimates due to projects being added or deleted, such as removing the plan to widen Highway 20 to four lanes and adding restricted turning at Highway 20/Jefferson by Creekside Park. There is also a proposal to add a local street connection onto Highway 20 from Desperado Trail at the east end of the FivePine campus, past Sisters Movie House, with a right-in/right-out on Highway 20.

Projects in the original TSP that have been completed were also identified.