Letter: Building roundabout near NIU is horrible idea

Replacing the intersection of Normal Road and Lucinda Avenue with a roundabout in the heart of Northern Illinois University’s campus in DeKalb is a terrible idea.

Because of the location of the roundabout, the constant traffic throughout school days and lots of local drivers that have little to no experience with roundabouts, DeKalb should not go through with the roundabout project.

With the roundabout being built right next to popular campus buildings such as the Peters Campus Life Building and the Holmes Student Center, as well as Anderson Hall being just down the road, there will almost always be traffic in this area during school days and school hours. Given the fact that students and faculty need to access these buildings almost every day for classes, work and studying, the constant traffic on a new type of road could lead to more accidents in DeKalb.

According to a 2023 Fox article titled “Hate roundabouts? Avoid these states – they have the most,” “There are some 13,000 roundabouts in the U.S. (depending on what you consider a roundabout) – that works out to one roundabout per 25,531 people, give or take.” A graph in the article showed that there are 128 roundabouts in Illinois.

When you combine the rarity of roundabouts in not only the state of Illinois but across the country with many young, inexperienced drivers in a college town, you have a recipe for disaster.

Building this roundabout is a horrible idea and a threat to safety to DeKalb and NIU.

Zachary Bertram

DeKalb