Local motorists who travel on Kasold Drive between Sixth Street and Bob Billings Parkway should be aware of plans to rebuild and perhaps make major changes to the traffic flow on that street.

City officials currently are taking public comment on two plans for Kasold. A public meeting to explain the project was held last month, and residents still can view the plans and submit their comments on the kasolddrive.com website.

Traffic officials are focusing on two very different options for the heavily traveled street. Option 1 would involve building a roundabout at Kasold and Harvard Road; Option 2 would involve installation of traffic signals at that intersection.

Many Lawrence residents would oppose Option 1 simply because it involves another roundabout on a local thoroughfare, but that’s not the only aspect of this plan that motorists may not like. This entire stretch of Kasold currently carries four lanes of traffic, but Option 1 proposes maintaining four lanes of traffic for only about a block on either end of the project and narrowing the street to two lanes between Eighth and 14th streets. Reducing the number of lanes on this busy street doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Bike lanes and a center median are included in both options, but bike lanes at roundabouts raise some safety concerns for many travelers. The city’s drawings for Option 1 show the Kasold bike lanes ending just short of the Harvard roundabout. Sidewalks connect to the street at those points, presumably to encourage bicyclists to get off the street and use sidewalks and crosswalks to get safely through the intersection. It might work with proper signage.

Option 2 takes a more traditional approach to the intersection. Signals would be installed, and the width of the four traffic lanes would be reduced to provide room for bike lanes. Left-turn lanes also would be added at Harvard.

According to the website, both options would improve traffic flow. Option 1, it says, would lower speeds on the street, increase the safety at intersections and have a lower construction cost. Lower speeds might be simply a product of increased congestion on the two-lane road; increased safety probably is attributable to the contention that fewer serious collisions occur in roundabouts than in signaled intersections; and cost is always a consideration. Option 2 isn’t eligible for about $400,000 in state funding and would cost the city about $5.13 million, about $760,000 more than Option 1.

The author of a letter to the editor published in the Journal-World last week attended May’s public meeting and came away with the impression that city officials already had decided on Option 1. Who knows what a majority of city residents prefer, but city officials hopefully still are open to comment on a plan that would narrow Kasold and install another roundabout on a major city street.