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Among the many ideas for sprucing up Beaverdale, here’s one for the Des Moines City Council to kick around: How about a roundabout at the intersection of Beaver and Urbandale avenues?

Last week, the city’s traffic safety committee recommended a circular configuration with no stoplights as the preferred alternative for that spot.

“Something needs to be done; everybody agrees on that,” said City Traffic Engineer Gary Fox. “A roundabout really offers some exciting opportunities to do additional streetscaping with visual art or sculpture or landscaping. We don’t want it to be an active people place, with a lot of pedestrians crossing the street to get into the middle.”

Fox said he knows of only one roundabout in the city of Des Moines, and that one is southwest of the airport, “off the beaten path,” he said. “Hardly anybody knows it’s there.”

Fox said roundabouts have gained acceptance in the United States as a safe alternative to traditional intersections. “The state of New York will not allow a new signal on a state-controlled highway until a study proves a roundabout won’t work,” he said.

A couple of the European-inspired structures have been built in Des Moines suburbs in recent years. Whether Beaverdale gets one will be up to the City Council.

“It’s about the same cost either way,” Fox said, in comparing roundabouts with traffic signal intersections. “This would be a little bigger footprint, so we would have to buy a bigger right of way, but we would avoid the cost of signals.”