In March, project engineers with the city of Bellingham completed a 60% design mockup of a new roundabout connecting Squalicum Way, Birchwood Avenue and Meridian Street near Cornwall Park.
Multiple traffic projects have been completed in Whatcom County over the past few years, including a roundabout at James Street and Bakerview Road, a roundabout on West Illinois and Meridian Street, and a bike and pedestrian lane reroute project on Holly Street downtown.
A 90% completed mockup of the project is set to be completed by this fall, and construction will begin in the fall of 2027.
“In 2016, the city council adopted Bellingham’s complete network ordinance, which aligns with Washington’s complete streets legislation,” said Connor Harron, communications and outreach coordinator for Bellingham’s Public Works department.
According to Harron, the ordinance requires the city “to place particular emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable travelers, primarily people walking and biking.”
Roundabouts are newcomers to American cities. There are currently 11,000 roundabouts in the U.S., more than double that of ten years ago. American cities have historically featured wide boulevards with traffic controlled via stop lights. The first modern roundabout was built in the U.S. in 1990.
Michelle Grandy is the Smart Trips program manager at Whatcom Council of Governments. “I definitely welcome (it) for pedestrian access,” said Grandy. “The nice thing about the designs now, with those traffic islands in the middle of the lane, is that the area that a pedestrian has to cross is so much smaller than having to get across a whole four-lane roadway.”
Smart Trips helps transit riders, cyclists and walkers understand city infrastructure and aids them in planning and tracking their routes.
Last year, traffic improvements were made to Holly Street, a steep, double-lane, one-way street that runs through downtown towards Bellingham’s waterfront. The project added barriers to and diverted bike paths out of the flow of traffic and closer to crosswalks in intersections to improve rider visibility and safety when riding near parked cars.
This configuration is often called a “Dutch Intersection” due to its popularity in the Netherlands, which is widely considered the most bike-friendly nation in the world.
“The Holly Street bike lane pilot project increased bike ridership on Holly Street by approximately 45% compared to 2024 pre-project counts, making it the most heavily used bike route downtown,” Harron said.
The Dutch-style intersection format is evident in the mockup for the Squalicum Way roundabout, but not all riders have found the change on Holly Street welcoming.
“I really hate that thing. You get going pretty fast down Holly and you do that weird swerve, and if you don’t, you run over those little speed bumps,” said Roya Behbakht, a third-year economics major at Western Washington University from Denver, Colorado. Behbakht is a self-described fair-weather bike commuter. “If there are pedestrians walking across at the same time that you’re riding, you get really close to them.”
Behbakht described the crossings as “liminal space bike lanes,” and said the risk of collisions with cars is still high. In other parts of town, pseudo-roundabouts, known as traffic calming circles, do not feature medians or a direction of travel and pose other issues for commuters.
“That’s the shame about the whole thing, right, is that it’s supposed to calm cars down,” Grandy said. “But then for whatever reason, people think they can go around it the wrong direction or cut the corners of it. That’s more of a social sciences conundrum, but of course we tell people to follow the rules of the road.”
Grandy said that for those who struggle with traffic safety on certain streets, Smart Trips helps them find new routes, but surrendering designated bike routes to unsafe drivers can feel like a defeat. She encouraged the public to use the SeeClickFix tool to report traffic control issues to the city.
“(The five-way intersection of Lakeway Drive and Ellis and Holly Street) is just so populated and I don’t think it’s well organized, and I think a roundabout would be really good there,” said Behbakht when asked if she thought Squalicum Way was the best place for a roundabout. “That’s the one I feel like I’m in danger at every single time.”
Behbakht spent time in Arco, Italy, where she said that bike lanes in the area serve as separate streets to keep bikes, pedestrians and cars away from one another. Italy has roughly 18,000 roundabouts and is 32 times smaller than the U.S. by land mass.
Behbakht also said that drivers are far more accustomed to bikes in Italy than in the United States, but she still finds Bellingham and Seattle to be relatively good places to ride.
“They’re always doing some sort of project on the interurban, and that’s a great place to bike,” she said. “Bellingham’s a way more bike-friendly city than Denver was.”
Benji Cook (he/him) is a city news reporter for The Front. He is a post-baccalaureate visual journalism student with over a decade of experience as a professional photographer, covering everything from outdoor sports to political rallies. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative media production from the University of Colorado, Boulder. You can reach him at benjcook.thefront@gmail.com.
