Troy Talks West Main Street Roundabout
Vol. IV, No. 32 - It's Not About Fixing a Broken Intersection - It's About How Much Are Willing to Spend for Marginal Benefits
Tonight, the Troy City Council have council-of the-whole to talk about options for the future of Experiment Farm Road and West Main Street. The meeting starts at 6:00 p.m. and is in the Bravo Room at the Hobart Arena. Our residents should attend.
Fundamentally, the meeting is about a deceptively simple question: what should happen at the intersection of West Main Street and Experiment Farm/South Stanfield? More specifically, should Troy rebuild the existing traffic signal or replace it with a multi‑lane roundabout?
On paper, this looks like a technical decision. In reality, it’s a value judgment. And that value judgement has a lot of information that goes into that decision. First and foremost, there is no real clarity on who is supporting this effort. Is this multi-lane roundabout being pushed by the Ohio Department of Transportation, or is this being supported by staff members within the City of Troy?
The issue is fully compounded because the City of Troy entered into a contract with American Structurepoint in the first quarter of 2025 for an OATS Study (ODOT Analysis and Traffic Simulation) that cost taxpayers an additional $120,000. The report which, as far as this publication has seen, hasn’t been publicly released. Most of the factural information on this intersection comes back to the 2023 Feasbility Study.
That 2023 report looked at three options for a long‑range “design year” of 2047: keep the current signal as‑is, rebuild the signal with added turn lanes and new timing, or convert the intersection to a multi‑lane roundabout. By the city’s own standards, the goal is for that intersection to operate at a reasonable Level of Service—engineer‑speak for delay—throughout the day, without traffic queues stretching back into other intersections.
The study’s results are straightforward. If Troy does nothing, the existing signal falls behind the demand placed on it by 2047 - twenty years into the future. In the evening rush hour, the westbound approach in particular is expected to bog down, with long queues and delays that make the overall intersection rating slip into what engineers call failing conditions. No one should be surprised by this; keeping a 2020s‑era signal configuration indefinitely, while traffic grows, is not a realistic strategy.
But the report does not stop with “do nothing” versus “build a roundabout.” It explicitly analyzes a middle option: keep the intersection signalized, but add some targeted turn lanes and adjust the timing. Under those conditions, looking at the same 2047 time horizon, the signalized intersection meets the city’s own threshold for acceptable performance. That means an upgraded signal clears the bar Troy has set for itself for how this intersection should work in the future.
So why is the roundabout being recommended?
The consultant’s answer is that the roundabout handles traffic more efficiently than the upgraded signal, particularly in the busiest hours. In the models, drivers experience lower average delay and shorter queues with a roundabout than they do with the rebuilt signal when you look at the traffic peaks. Off‑peak, both designs perform well; traffic is simply lighter. The difference shows up when the intersection is under stress. That is a legitimate benefit. Anyone who has sat through multiple signal cycles at a red light understands that reducing delay during the worst times of day has value.
However, the magnitude and timing of that benefit matter. The study shows that both the improved signal and the roundabout produce what the city considers acceptable operations in 2047. The roundabout is better at squeezing down average delays, but it does not turn a fundamentally broken intersection into a good one—because that’s already what the upgraded signal does. We are not comparing “chaos” against “order”; we are comparing “acceptable” against “somewhat better.”
That’s where cost should come into focus.
The 2023 Structurepoint report estimates that an upgraded signal—complete with new turn lanes and timing—will cost about 3.6 million in 2026 dollars. The roundabout is estimated at roughly 4.2 million. The difference between those two estimates is on the order of 600,000. In the narrative section of the report, the consultant describes that difference as “negligible,” on the grounds that construction markets are volatile and contingencies are already baked in. In their view, once you account for inflation and uncertainties, the spread between 3.6 and 4.2 million is not enough to drive the decision.
That is a remarkable statement.
Calling $600,000 “negligible” might make sense from the perspective of a statewide bid tab or a federal program spreadsheet. It sounds very different when you are looking at a city’s capital plan, where smaller numbers than that spark debate and projects live or die over far less. Once you move out of the consultant’s spreadsheet and into the council chamber, the question is not whether the difference is statistically significant; the question is whether Troy wants to consciously pay more than it has to for this intersection, in order to gain the specific benefits a roundabout offers.
Those benefits may well be worth it. Roundabouts can reduce certain kinds of severe crashes, eliminate the long red‑light waits that frustrate drivers, and handle future traffic growth more gracefully than a signal in some conditions. They also come with tradeoffs: they are unfamiliar for some drivers, especially older ones; they change how trucks move through a corridor; and they can alter access patterns for nearby businesses in ways a simple signal upgrade might not.
Tomorrow night, council is not being asked to ratify a technical inevitability. It is being asked to decide whether the marginal improvements of a multi‑lane roundabout at West Main and Experiment Farm/South Stanfield are worth the additional cost and the permanent change in how that intersection functions. The consultant has given them permission to ignore the cost difference by labeling it “negligible.” Residents should decide whether they agree.
It’s also possible that the new OATS study, that was paid for over a year ago will finally see the light of day and the public can get a more updated view of the traffic factors in place. At the very least, the city should at least provide the updated cost differences between what the different options cost. Those costs last fully dicussed in the three year old study are certainly worthy of revision.
Fundamentally, if the city chooses the roundabout, it should be honest that it is doing so not because the alternative “doesn’t work,” but because it believes the long‑term benefits justify spending more and reshaping the intersection. If it chooses the upgraded signal, it should be honest that it is accepting slightly less performance at the absolute worst times of day in order to conserve resources and preserve a more familiar traffic pattern.
Either way, Troy deserves a clear explanation.
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