Rosegreen Florist<\/a>, whose shop sits at the corner of the troubled intersection.<\/p>\n\u201cWe have plenty of videos of them hitting the curbs and very close calls to pedestrians,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Safety concerns drive change<\/p>\n
Houston Public Works Director Randy Macchi explained the decision to remove the roundabout in a written response to our questions. <\/p>\n
\u201cMany drivers can be seen not using the roundabout in a safe and efficient manner. Replacing the roundabout with a traffic signal creates a simplified intersection design that is therefore safer for drivers at this location,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Despite this particular failure, the city isn\u2019t abandoning roundabouts altogether. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a one-off situation,\u201d Macchi emphasized. \u201cThe City of Houston is dedicated to safety and efficiency in managing traffic; if solid engineering judgement determines that a roundabout is the necessary solution at a particular intersection, then a roundabout will be installed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spending your money<\/p>\n
The financial impact of the failed traffic experiment continues to grow:<\/p>\n
Initial roundabout construction (2024): Approximately $400,000 (installed by TxDOT)<\/p>\n
Roundabout removal design: $34,679<\/p>\n
Estimated removal construction cost: $200,000<\/p>\n
New traffic signal design: $41,237.80<\/p>\n
Construction costs for new signals: Yet to be determined<\/p>\n
The total cost to taxpayers already exceeds $675,000, with additional expenses expected once the traffic signal construction costs are finalized.<\/p>\n
The city plans to begin removing the roundabout on December 1, with the project expected to take approximately 90 days to complete. <\/p>\n
This means more disruption for local businesses that have already weathered significant construction impacts.<\/p>\n
Another construction project<\/p>\n
The continuous construction has taken its toll on nearby businesses. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really impacting our clientele. It\u2019s slowing it down by a lot and you know we\u2019re just trying to stay afloat basically,\u201d Collazo explains.<\/p>\n
The evidence of the roundabout\u2019s failure is scattered across the intersection, a collection of vehicle parts and even abandoned license plates from drivers who hit the structure with significant force.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s stop wasting taxpayers money and get one solution, get it done,\u201d Collazo said. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 A problematic roundabout in Houston\u2019s Northside will be demolished just one year after its construction, following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[405,13518,56,58,57,19293,34468,3743,251,1559,34469,3174,32319,3961,9237,272,840,271],"class_list":["post-66651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-harris-county","tag-highway","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-public-works","tag-irvington-boulevard","tag-john-whitmire","tag-local-news","tag-northside","tag-patton-street","tag-road","tag-roundabout","tag-safety","tag-texas-department-of-transportation","tag-traffic","tag-transportation","tag-txdot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}