Editorial: Is tri-community going to get its first roundabout?

First, people wanted to put a roundabout in at Five Points to help move traffic through, but that didn’t happen. It was back when they were thinking of redoing Main Street.
The streets at Five Points are all county roads and the county wasn’t interested. First of all, it would have needed quite a bit of space, taking out a chunk of city hall and the former park comfort station (now called Victory Station).
Then, the VBT DDA was talking about a roundabout at Belleville and Ecorse roads, when that crossing was being redone. Wayne County didn’t like that idea for their roadways there and encouraged, instead, a Michigan-left turn. That’s in place and if it was supposed to make the crossing safer, it didn’t.
Now, VBT boardmembers have been informed that the Wayne County Airport Authority is looking at a roundabout for the intersection of Tyler and Beck roads as part of the upgrading and construction on the east side of Willow Run Airport.
An airport official said they are looking at bringing in heavier planes, but they will be creating a new connector to I-94 which will drive the heavy traffic away from VBT. One official said they plan to have rental cars at the airport and some of the people will come to VBT restaurants from the smaller aircraft that will be stored in the small hangars being planned.
We’ll see how this roundabout fares.