The East Lansing City Council will discuss building a roundabout at the intersection of Albert Avenue and Charles Street at today’s work session.

The roundabout, like those found on campus, would be built to accommodate the City Center Project that is scheduled to open in 2002.

Although the roundabout is still in the discussion phase, Councilmember Beverly Baten said there will definitely need to be a design change made to the intersection.

“It’s going to change Albert Avenue,” Baten said. “It’s one of those things that’s controversial. Of course we’re familiar with the one on campus and the one in Okemos, but we don’t have anything like that in East Lansing.”

Jim van Ravensway, director of community planning and development, said a roundabout would be safer for pedestrians than a four-way stop, which what is there now.

“It keeps the continuous traffic flow,” van Ravensway said. “They’re better for getting through traffic than stop signs.”

If approved by the council in coming months, construction on the roundabout will not begin until spring 2002.

City Manager Ted Staton said the construction period would not be long, and eventually would improve business downtown. This is the only traffic roundabout being considered for the downtown area.

“It’s a direct result of the extra traffic that we expect will happen when the City Center opens,” Staton said. “The traffic engineers believe that if you were going to have three straight blocks all with either a traffic light or a four-way stop, you would have vehicular traffic congestion.”

In other city council business, the results of a neighborhood survey conducted by the Community Relations Coalition will also be presented to council members.

The coalition distributed the surveys to city residents in two sections of the Bailey Neighborhood, one section of the Oakhill Neighborhood and most of the Red Cedar Neighborhood. The coalition expects to use the results to improve relations between students and nonstudents living in East Lansing.

Steve Kaagan, the MSU faculty representative to the coalition, said he also will present some of the recent activities and programs the coalition has sponsored, and some ideas for the future.

Although the coalition is independent of the city and the university, Kaagan said it will try to work closely with each by involving student organizations and council members in events and planning.

“There’s been a fair amount of work already with them, but still, it’s a constant process of reasserting who you are and what you intend,” Kaagan said. “I hope the council will see us as a very useful vehicle for things it wants to get done without us getting captured by them.”