I’ll be interested to see how Five Points roundabout works out

By the time this is read, the new roundabout at Malfunction Junction will be fully open.

Over the course of construction, the new roundabout has received some attention from naysayers who think it will be a waste of money and also not work. I’m not really sure, and only time will tell, but I’ve seen naysayers before with another roundabout – the one on Warrington Road that opened a few years ago. That roundabout was built before the ones on Beaver Dam and New roads. I haven’t heard or read much about the Warrington roundabout, so I assume it must be working.

I reached out to Delaware Department of Transportation spokesperson C.R. McLeod to see if my assumption was correct.

Because it’s a new intersection, there isn’t any before-and-after data, said McLeod. However, he said, since its opening in 2021, there have been eight reported crashes – five rear-end collisions, one angle crash, one sideswipe crash and one single-vehicle roadway departure.

“Most importantly, none of the crashes resulted in serious injuries,” said McLeod. “For that reason, we would say it is working as planned. Because of the lower speeds a roundabout requires, the likelihood of a serious injury or fatality occurring is drastically reduced.”

As for the area’s newest roundabout, McLeod said there are two items being overlooked. First, he said, the new left turn from Plantation and Beaver Dam roads to Route 9 west will have two turn lanes that are 230 feet in length; previously, there was a single left-turn lane that was 110 feet in length. Second, he continued, the new access road on the opposite side of the intersection should help prevent backups into the intersection with Route 1.

This project, the Old Orchard Road realignment and the Minos Conaway Road project are all pieces of the larger Five Points puzzle, said McLeod. DelDOT will continue to collect data at Five Points over the next several years to see how traffic is responding to these projects, he said.

I used to live off Plantation Road, and I definitely sat through many light cycles trying to get onto Route 9, so I’m interested to see how it works out. The good news, for me, is that I almost never have to go that way anymore, which means I can monitor traffic flow from DelDOT’s newly installed traffic camera that’s facing the roundabout.

Fs on license plates

This little tidbit falls into the things-I-see-when-stuck-in-traffic category. A while ago, I noticed there are two different shapes for the Fs on Delaware license plates. One is an F that has a right angle. The other is an F with an acute angle. Recently, I saw the two styles parked near each other in a parking lot, so I took photos and reached out to DelDOT.

McLeod said the state’s black-and-white porcelain and stainless-steel license plates are intentionally designed to capture the historical nature of Delaware’s early plate design dating back to 1909. Those plates are re-created as an exact reproduction of the plate at the time of original issue, including the fonts used at that time, he said.

“The slanted F was used for the riveting of the letter to the plate, as the rivet holes on all plates were universal, so the F was slanted to account for that,” said McLeod.

Joke of the Week

For the past couple of years, the calendar I’ve been using at the office has been supplied by the state’s Delaware Grown initiative. I get the calendars at the state fair. According to that calendar, Sunday, May 19, marks the start of Delaware Grown Week, so I thought I’d share a farming joke. As always, send jokes to cflood@capegazette.com.

Q: What kind of things does a farmer talk about when they are milking cows?

A: Udder nonsense!