Uff da! Poulsbo goes roundabout

“Got any pictures of your roundabout?” the editor of our sister paper across the bridge, the North Kitsap Herald, queried over the wire this week. “They’re thinking of building one over here.”

Uff da! Is progressive traffic planning finally coming to Poulsbo, Land of the Ever-Widened Highway, City of (Endless Traffic) Lights on the Fjord?

Happy to further the cause, we sent the newsroom intern up to Madison and High School Road, to zap some images of island motorists breezing through a once-hellish intersection now tamed by good engineering and unusually gutsy politicians.

We’d like to say Bainbridge is Kitsap’s roundabout trendsetter, but that wouldn’t be quite true. Port Orchard had one first, even if we islanders try to forget that fact. But after five years with our own circle, we can report to our pickled-cod-and-horned-helmet friends in Little Norway that they need one, too.

Properly scaled and designed, roundabouts offer fewer points of conflict between motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists sharing an intersection. They’re environmentally sound, whisking along motorists who otherwise would idle away precious gasoline waiting for a signal to change (the hallmark, by our observation, of every intersection in Poulsbo). Perhaps best of all, roundabouts force motorists (even Bainbridge’s Lexus leadfoots) to SLOW DOWN, however briefly. Collisions are rare, and those few that occur are at low enough speed that injury and vehicle damage are minimized. Forget fears that miscreant drivers might speed through a roundabout – they can’t. There’s one set of laws that nobody violates, and it’s called physics.

If we have one bit of advice for Poulsbo city officials, it’s this: ignore public opinion. When Bainbridge city engineers dreamed up a roundabout here, the sentiment of the hoi polloi was resoundingly, overwhelming, deafeningly negative. Thirty minutes after the circle opened, it was the greatest thing since brie. (Poulsbo analogy: lutefisk.)

So, Poulsbo friends: If you’re serious about building a roundabout, c’mon over and take a spin around ours.

Just remember: those already in the circle have right of way.

Love, love, love

Too young to see the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, or too old to be among the screaming throngs at the Shea Stadium concert a few months later, most everyone can still hum a Beatles tune.

So ubiquitous is the Fab Four’s melodic output that the editor, growing up in a household without a single rock n’ roll record, could still become a Fab Four fan through the symphonic arrangements of his father’s Boston Pops anthology – Beatles with Strings! – youth counterculture made safe for the comb-over set.

So it’s no surprise that 40 years after its release, the Beatles’ watershed “Revolver” album and its deathless hooks are still winning over young fans.

This Friday evening on the Grace Church lawn, a group of Bainbridge High School students and recent graduates will stage the third and final production of their “Revolver” revue, marking the 40th anniversary of one of pop music’s greatest achievements, a faithful recreation of the of the album’s exhilerating songs and groundbreaking arrangments.

Entering the dog days of August, you’re probably hearing the usual complaints that there’s nothing on the island for kids to do, blah blah blah. Friday will showcase a group of talented island young people with initiative and creativity to spare.

See the show – it’s fab.