Lamar County officials are in the process of building a two-lane roundabout at the intersection of Weathersby and Oak Grove roads to cut down on traffic congestion during busy hours.
Engineer Don Walker discussed the proposal with the Lamar County Board of Supervisors last Thursday at the William j. “Pete” Gamble III Chancery Courthouse in Purvis.
“On July 12, we actually received an activation of the project,” he said. “What that means is MDOT gave us a project number, so we now have a project number for that project. … Now they have also sent us a Memorandum of Understanding that has to be executed between Lamar County and MDOT so that that project can continue on through the paperwork process.”
Because the intersection is mainly within the Hattiesburg city limits, Walker said another MOU between Lamar County and the City of Hattiesburg should be drawn up on the actual work.
“I have already talked with the mayor of Hattiesburg about it and the city engineer so that they are familiar with it,” he said. “The next step is we need to generate how we are going to interact with the city on construction and right-of-way that will be need in that area.”
District 4 Supervisor Phillip Carlisle said the roundabout is unique. “This is not a typical traffic circle that you see,” he said.
“It will be larger, it’s wider and it will have multiple turn lanes and movement on that,” Walker said. “This roundabout has actually been endorsed by MDOT (Mississippi Department of Transportation), so I think it is a viable option at this location. We’ll continue to gather data on it and continuing to look at and tweaking that application at that location.”
Carlisle said a roundabout can be confusing to some people.
“I think there’s a lot of negative connotations out there on traffic circles,” he said, “but they are just physically just one lane.”
“Some are too small and some are not handled correctly,” Walker said. “You are going to have areas of conflict in a traffic circle, but we are trying to minimize those particular points of conflict. I think the way we have it laid out, it is going to do that.”
District 1 Supervisor Steve Lampton said he supported the roundabout.
“I like the idea and I think it’s going to work out well," he said.
