Native gateway roundabouts

• US 101 at S Dry Creek Rd and Walkabout Way, the corner with the gas station beside Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal land. It carries about 11,000 vehicles a day and had 26 reported crashes within 250 feet from 2015 to October 2026, 23 of them coded as intersection-related, with 4 in 2024 and 5 in 2025.^{[6, 7, 17]}
• US 101 at Laird Rd and Straitland Rd, Laird's Corner. The two side streets are offset about 160 feet apart on a 50 mph freight route carrying 9,500 to 11,000 vehicles a day, with several business driveways. It had 5 reported crashes, all with no apparent injury.^{[6, 7, 8]}
• US 101 at SR 112, a skewed, high-speed wye with a slip ramp. SR 112 carries about 5,200 vehicles a day, about 9% of them trucks, and its approach is posted at 55 mph. It had 19 reported crashes within 250 feet, including one suspected serious injury and 3 involving heavy trucks.^{[6, 7, 8]}

All three sit on state freight routes.^[9]

WSDOT's own rules already point here. Its Intersection Control Evaluation requires a roundabout to be considered whenever an intersection is improved,^[2] and its roundabout chapter sets the design rules for them.^[1] A roundabout slows traffic at the intersection and removes the high-speed crossing movements that cause the worst crashes, while keeping freight moving.

WSDOT is already planning two-lane roundabouts on US 101 east of Port Angeles, at Taylor Cutoff Road and Mill Road, with bids expected in early 2027 and construction in summer 2027.^[10]

ConceptAt each site, a single-lane roundabout about 150 feet across, with an 18 foot circulating lane, a 13 foot mountable truck apron sized for the longest legal semi-trucks, and a raised splitter island on every approach. At Laird Road the circle pulls both offset side streets into one intersection. At SR 112 it replaces the skewed wye and slip ramp with a right-angle entry. Lane count and size would be set by WSDOT's capacity analysis.

ConceptEach central island becomes a low, mounded piece of Olympic foothill forest floor: sword fern, salal, rushes and vine maple around a weeping western hemlock, a dwarf weeping form of the Peninsula's own native tree.^{[12, 13]} On the approaches, full-size western hemlocks with vine maple, salal and sword fern form gateway groves, set back outside the clear zone and sight lines.

Safety sets the rules. On approaches of 45 mph and above, or on freight corridors, WSDOT's Roadside Policy Manual allows only trees or large shrubs "with mature trunks less than 4 inches in diameter" in central islands, says "do not use large boulders or fixed objects," and calls for the island to be mounded and planted to block headlight glare and views across the circle.^[4] WSDOT's roadside safety chapter treats trees 4 inches or more in diameter as fixed objects.^[3] The concept follows those rules: the big trees stand in the gateway groves, the island holds plants a vehicle can ride over or through, and there is no rock of any size, in the islands or in the groves.

WSDOT's roundabout chapter says to "light the roundabout from the outside in toward the center," and notes that "ground-level lighting within the central island that shines upward toward objects in the central island can also improve their visibility."^[1]

ConceptStreet lights at each entry and splitter island, pointed down. In the island, two or three low, shielded, warm uplights set close to the hemlock and aimed up into its crown, away from every approach, so drivers see the lit tree, not the lamps. Light poles in the clear zone would be on breakaway bases.^[3]

WSDOT keeps formal roundabout landscapes only where a local partner agrees to maintain them. Without one, its practice is to pave the interior or cover it with rock.^[5]

ConceptPlants grown on the Peninsula from local stock, and a maintenance agreement with community, Tribal or County partners. Local native propagation already happens here, at the Clallam Conservation District's native plant sale and Olympic National Park's Matt Albright Native Plant Center.^{[14, 15]}

Nobody has been contacted, and nothing here implies the involvement or endorsement of any agency, tribe or company.