Fairfield council OKs roundabout design

FAIRFIELD – The city of Fairfield is one step closer to installing a roundabout on South Highway 1 at the intersection with Libertyville Road.

The Fairfield City Council approved the final design of a roundabout as part of a $5.9 street repair project scheduled for 2023. Since Highway 1 is a state road, the Iowa Department of Transportation will be in charge of the project and supply more than half of the funding, $3.5 million directly plus a few hundred thousand dollars in grant money from the state to the city.

The project will include reconfiguring and repaving a portion of South Highway 1 between Fillmore Avenue and the proposed roundabout at the intersection with Libertyville Road. The road is now two-lane, but it will be converted to three-lane with a middle lane reserved for left-turning traffic. This will require widening the road 14 feet.

On top of the change to the street, two paths will be added on each side of Highway 1. On the west will be a sidewalk and on the east will be a wider slab of concrete that will connect to the Fairfield Loop Trail.

The project will involve purchasing seven feet of frontage from the property owners who live along the street. Councilor Michael Halley said it's important for the property owners to know they will be paid the fair market value of their land. Not only that, but they will now have access to a new sidewalk and trail for free.

'I walked along the shoulder from Libertyville Road to Fillmore Avenue, and I did not feel safe at all,” Halley said. 'I would never ride my bike along there.”

The last piece of the puzzle that the council debated at its meeting Monday was whether to connect the proposed roundabout to South Junction Road, the short north-south street east of Highway 1 that passes by First Christian Church and leads into the Neighborhood Builders & Developers subdivision and Pilot Grove Savings Bank. The council voted unanimously to connect the roundabout to South Junction Road.

Halley said the main selling point for installing a roundabout on South Highway 1 is safety. He said statistics show roundabouts lead to fewer crashes and less severe crashes because they slow traffic. Roundabouts are also easier and cheaper to maintain since they don't require traffic lights.

The south side of Fairfield has developed significantly in the past decade or so, with the addition of Pilot Grove Savings Bank, the housing subdivision, the new Casey's, Jefferson County Health Center moving there, AmericInn and the new spec building courtesy of Fairfield Economic Development. More development is planned next year when Jefferson County Kids plans to build a child care center on Libertyville.

With all these new homes and businesses in the area, it was clear that traffic on South Highway 1 would increase, and that the city needed to find a way to help all those people get where they needed to go safely.