Could roundabouts, traffic circles make Lexington roads safer? Task force weighs in
From 2020 to 2025, Lexington has had nearly 88,000 collisions, according to state and local data, including 1,752 in 2025 alone and 41 fatal incidents, with 15 pedestrians and one bicyclist killed.
A city task force has spent the last year researching actionable, short-term solutions to make Lexington’s roads safer. The STREEET (Shared Travel Requires Engineering, Education and Enforcement of Traffic) Task Force, made up of members of the Urban County Council, the city’s police department, traffic engineers, community members and more have completed their final report with recommendations to bring those collision numbers down. The task force made recommendations Tuesday.
“These aren’t just numbers,” said 10th District Legislative Aide Alyssa McKenzie as she presented the task force’s recommendations in a Tuesday work session. “These are individuals whose lives and health and families have been affected by completely preventing their crashes, continuing to center people who were impacted.”
Now that those recommendations are finalized, the task force is being disbanded. It’s up to Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council to make sure new projects and legislation are seen through.
“Transportation is the biggest issue as far as I’m concerned,” 4th District Council member Emma Curtis said in a Tuesday council work session where the task force’s recommendations were discussed. “It impacts every single Lexingtonian.”
The task force is just one way the city aims to improve street safety. Later this year, a new engineering manual will set rules for how Lexington streets can be better designed for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
The city also recently adopted a new “vision zero policy,” setting a goal for Lexington to have zero traffic deaths annually by 2050.
In October 2025, the council allocated $700,000 of leftover money from the previous city budget to fund several of the group’s recommendations. Others may see funding requests in the upcoming city budget.
The task force built recommendations around three themes — engineering, education and enforcement.
Engineering recommendations: roundabouts, traffic circles
The engineering team of the task force want to pilot projects that reconstruct Lexington roads to slow down traffic. Some of those projects have already received funding.
The council allocated $50,000 to build traffic circles in several Lexington intersections. Traffic circles function similarly to roundabouts but are smaller in scope — and are much cheaper. Constructing traffic circles is often as simple as putting large flower plots at the center of an intersection, forcing drivers to move around the pot rather than driving straight through in any direction.
More traditional roundabouts, which require a full reconstruction of a major intersection, will be studied over the next year. About $365,000 was allocated for a study to identify five Lexington intersections that would benefit from a roundabout. That study should be completed by December, according the task force’s report.
Another study will try to improve crosswalk signal timing. Timing changes could be as simple as adding more time for pedestrians to cross a street, or could change signals to allow pedestrians to cross an intersection while all cars on the road remain stopped. Council allocated $150,000 for that study, which should also be completed by December as well.
An ongoing pilot project reduced a portion of High Street between Woodland Avenue and Rose Street to a one-car lane and added a protected bike lane as well as several street parking spots. Officials call this a “quick build” project, one where construction can be completed in a matter of days. The task force recommends the city develop a robust program to do more of these projects that meaningfully change roads with minimal construction costs.
The council’s environmental quality and public works committee will develop a framework for that program this year.
A new program for Lexington residents to advocate for safer streets?
The task force also wants Lexington to help residents advocate for improvements in their own neighborhoods.
The “Community Champions Program” would consist of online and in-person materials that residents could use to win support and funding for improvements to neighborhood streets. That could include lessons on how to talk with neighbors about projects and what programs are available to residents, like the existing Neighborhood Traffic Management Program or future quick build projects the task force also wants to see created.
The details of that program will be developed over the next year.
Other education recommendations include improving consistency in how different government divisions understand and enforce street safety, and $115,000 has been allocated for new ways the city could engage the public on safety and placemaking projects.
New legislation would ban drag racing, parking in bike lanes
Thanks to task force recommendations, the council is looking at new ways to enforce traffic laws — and may write some new ones.
The council’s social services and public safety committee will draft and vote on new legislation this year that would ban parking in bike lanes. A new ordinance banning drag racing will come up in the same committee. Both pieces of legislation are expected to be voted on this summer.
The task force also wants Lexington to lobby the state legislature to legalize automated traffic enforcement. Red light cameras and speeding cameras that catch drivers breaking traffic laws are currently illegal in Kentucky.
But Lexington should partner with other cities in the commonwealth to advocate for those cameras being legal, the task force report says.
The city will also use $20,000 to test new speed limit or other traffic law signs at particularly dangerous intersections to see if and how those signs change driver behavior. If those signs help, the council may invest more money for road signs citywide.
A review of the signs’ effectiveness should be finished this summer.
