After nearly six months of use, the City of Fredericton is calling the Smythe Street roundabout a success.
An estimated three million vehicles have passed through it since it was installed. The Association of Consulting Engineers of New Brunswick recently awarded Fredericton and consultant E.X.P. with an engineering excellence award.
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The people who monitor activity in the roundabout say the challenges faced have been minor.
“One thing we’re commonly seeing is drivers when they enter the roundabout, make sure you yield to both lanes,” said Jon Lewis, a traffic engineer for the city. “That’s one of the more common driver errors that we’re seeing.”
A team of researchers at the University of New Brunswick is helping the transportation department see what’s going on with traffic in the roundabout.
The team uses a drone equipped with a video camera and flies it once a month 150 metres above the roundabout to gather data that is later examined at the university.
“It really enables us to get a bird’s eye view of the roundabout,” said Dr. Eric Hildebrand of UNB. “That’s a very unique experience for traffic engineers.”
Hildebrand said the footage they have collected over the past few months has sped up research tenfold.
“Typically you’d have to wait for three or four years and develop a collision history,” he said. “The problem with that is a lot of accidents have to happen before you understand what the problems and the issues are with the operation of the roundabout.”
Footage captured in the past few months has shown drivers entering the roundabout in the wrong direction, changing lanes within the roundabout and more.
Hildebrand said the footage helps them develop answers and solutions more quickly rather than “waiting for accidents to happen.”
The data collected could also assist with upcoming projects.
“This is going to allow us to make perhaps a few tweaks to this particular location, but also for any future developments that are similar to this it’ll help us make the design even safer,” said Hildebrand.
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