Holly Springs' first roundabout coming

Leaders, elected officials and ordinary citizens have long complained about the rash of accidents, some of those fatal, at the intersection of Highway 7 North and Eddie Lee Smith Drive in Holly Springs.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation is on the way with help.

Mitch Turner, District 2 engineer with MDOT, shared the good news.

“MDOT’s Traffic Engineering Division and Safety & Rails Division collects crash history data throughout our network,” he said. “The crash data for this location indicated that it met the thresholds for Federal Safety Funds.

“Designers then looked at the intersection geometry, traffic counts, etc. and determined that a roundabout was a good fit and could substantially diminish the number and severity of crashes.”

Work on clearing the way for construction is already underway and with good weather and other considerations the project may be completed in June or July 2022, Turner said.

The winning bid for the project came to $2,293,448, he said.

Gregory Construction of Columbus has the contract.

Turner said modern, well-designed roundabouts are a great tool for making some intersections safer. They provide a means to safely slow traffic approaching an intersection and to safely move traffic through the intersection at slow speeds, while minimizing the potential for dangerous t-bone crashes.

A design for a roundabout at the intersection of U.S. 72 and MS 7 North is underway, Turner said.

Traffic through the intersection will use parts of the work site for pass-through as MDOT breaks the construction into multiple phases, he said.