Ottawa ? This city has found a way to bring democracy and traffic engineering together on a controversial traffic issue: roundabouts.

Ottawa officials are considering installing the traffic-calming devices at intersections along Cedar Street, a major thoroughfare, during renovations next year. But they want to know what the city’s residents think — and they want those thoughts to be based on real experience.

So last month they installed a roundabout at 11th and Ash streets. The circular barrier in the middle of the intersection is designed to slow, not stop, approaching traffic.

Officials blanketed the town with fliers, newspaper ads and television information on how to navigate the devices.

And they asked drivers to tell their opinion to City Hall.

“I like it,” Ottawa City Commissioner Charles Gillette said. “But my philosophy is that enough other people have to like it, or we won’t have it.”

So far, the results are mixed.

“I hate it,” said Linda Endicott, who drives a large van as part of her job at an adult group home in Ottawa. “I can drive through, but it’s a tight squeeze. I don’t know about emergency vehicles.”

Linda Endicott navigates a roundabout at 11th and Ash streets in Ottawa. The roundabout, which is temporary, is being monitored by Ottawa officials to help them decide if permanent ones will help the town's traffic flow. Many Ottawans, including Endicott, balk at the roundabouts, calling them unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.

Ottawa City Manager Weldon Padgett said the roundabout was installed to elicit reactions. It will come down after two months, after which officials will decide if the device will be used on Cedar Street.

“We’re basically trying it on for size,” he said. “There’s always enough opposition to something new that we thought we better test it first. We didn’t want to have a big debate about something people weren’t educated or experienced with.

“We’re really telling people to try it out and let us know what they think.”

In Lawrence, city officials often work with the immediate neighborhoods that would be affected by a roundabout — the city has built four, plus several smaller “traffic circles.” They haven’t sought citywide input, however.

“I suppose we could, if we had an intersection or a street that’s a major thoroughfare, like Ottawa is doing, where more than a neighborhood would be impacted,” Lawrence Assistant City Manager Debbie Van Saun said. “But it may be easier to test an entire community’s reaction in a small town.”

The experience may be taking its toll on the wheel alignments of Ottawa drivers. The roundabout is scuffed all the way around, and there are a series of black skid marks across the top.

¢ Traffic commission says roundabouts here to stay (6-4-02)¢ 6News video report: Lawrence resident wants to put stop to roundabouts (6-1-02)¢ Roundabouts keep traffic going slowly in circles (1-24-02)¢ Letter: Roundabout run-around (4-24-01)¢ Roundabouts stymie fire trucks (4-14-01)

“I would rather have a four-way stop than this,” Endicott said.

City officials don’t want Cedar Street, which runs past Ottawa University, to be blockaded with a series of stop signs.

“It gets so much traffic, we don’t want to put in a four-way stop,” Padgett said. A roundabout “slows people down without making them stop, which is what we want.”