Readers circle back to Tallmadge intersection | Mark J. Price

If you happen to be reading this on Tallmadge Circle, please put down your phone and pay attention to the road.

Everyone else can keep reading.

My recent column “Is Tallmadge Circle one lane or two?” generated a lot of reactions. What comes around goes around, I suppose.

Some people were surprised to learn that — spoiler alert — the circle is only one lane. We confirmed it with Tallmadge police.

Readers had plenty to say.

“As a lifelong (well 60 years anyway) Tallmadge resident, we ‘Tallmadgeites’ typically know it’s one lane of course,” architect James D. Evans wrote.

“However, I always help people who are not sure with this simple clue: Is there a dashed or solid line defining two lanes? No, there is not. Therein lies your answer.”

Evans learned this in driver’s education a long time ago. That’s not to say that people don’t treat the circle as two lanes, though.

“Therein lies the real fun,” he acknowledged.

But Rick Nicodemus remembers being taught something entirely different at Tallmadge High School in the late 1960s when basketball coach Tom Rossiaky served as his driving instructor.

On their first day in the three-speed Chevy, Nicodemus learned to shift, steer and navigate the circle — all at once.

“We were told that the circle was two lanes and that the inside lane had the right of way,” he recalled. “And if you are traveling three or more roads around the circle that you move to the inside lane when entering, and move to the outside lane one road ahead of your exit. That strategy has worked for me for 54 years.”

I remember rounding the circle during driver’s training at North High School, and to this day, I have no idea why the instructor trusted me with his life that afternoon.

Cuyahoga Falls resident Dennis Moncrief knows the circle is one lane, but he’s developed an unusual practice while navigating it. For the past several years, he’s moved toward the center of the circle when he’s planning to travel more than halfway around. As he approaches the exit, he moves to the outer portion after signaling his intention with his right blinker.

“This practice seems to allow more space for those who enter, possibly allowing for a smoother flow of traffic, thus shortening the lines to enter, maybe?” Moncrief wrote. “I view it as a common courtesy (remember courtesy?) even though so many folks behave poorly these days, or take NASCAR races much too seriously.”

Because we can’t rely on people to be courteous these days, maybe a couple of “No passing” signs would be helpful, he suggested.

Guilford Township resident Laurel Gress has a different strategy when she finds herself at the circle.

“I hug the outside of Tallmadge Circle for fear that someone will block me in if I venture too close to the center,” she wrote. “I could never understand why anyone would want to be stuck on the inside lane of a traffic circle. How do they think they're going to exit?

“Now, if only you could have advised the goofballs who designed the roundabout at Cleveland-Massillon and Rothrock roads in Copley, especially since the sign says to stay in the inside lane to get to I-77!”

Well, I don’t mind the Cleveland-Massillon roundabout, but have you driven lately on Massillon Road in Green?!?! Just about every major intersection has been converted into a roundabout. It’s like participating in the giant slalom at the Winter Olympics.

John Gee has a fun nickname for the Tallmadge intersection: “Talladega Circle.” He’s been driving it since 1982 when he first got his license, and he always thought it was two lanes.

“Thanks for opening my eyes to the truth,” he wrote.

He finds it more frustrating than scary. He hates it when motorists come up behind him and then abruptly cut him off to exit or when drivers pull out of businesses without looking for oncoming traffic.

The column has inspired Gee to contact the mayor’s office about putting up a sign that says Tallmadge Circle is one lane. That would be the smartest thing to do, he said, “but sometimes the smartest solution isn’t the most obvious to people.”

Would you believe it could’ve been even more complicated? Tallmadge resident Vic Giannini said Akron almost built a traffic circle a few miles southwest at Six Corners in Goodyear Heights.

The city even bought the needed right-of-way for the project.

When Giannini served as the city’s customer service manager during the late 1990s, his office collected rent payments from the abutting property owners at Six Corners. The Dairy Queen and Normandy Cafe used city-owned land as parking areas. Some years after he retired in 2000, the city decided to sell the property back to the adjacent landowners.

“Thanks for clearing up that Tallmadge Circle is only one lane,” he wrote.

Can you imagine drivers having to face circles at Eastland Avenue in Akron and Southwest Avenue in Tallmadge? Just when they thought they were in the clear ... ANOTHER CIRCLE?!?!?

Mark Hicks, a third-generation commercial driver, wishes the column had offered suggestions on fixing the flaws of Tallmadge Circle instead of merely pointing them out.

“I have never seen a more unmarked circle than I have anywhere else in the country!” he wrote. “I honestly never knew that the circle was 25 mph, but it should be 15 MAXIMUM. In addition, signage should be posted at the end of each street/avenue before entering the circle, pointing this out.”

Better signs would raise driver awareness to help improve the flow of traffic, Hicks said.

That’s a good suggestion. I figure it’s taken more than 200 years to get to this point in Tallmadge. Maybe we’ll figure it out in another 200 years.

Finally, we heard from the Rev. Stan Wallace, who politely took exception to my calling Tallmadge Circle the “granddaddy of all roundabouts in Ohio.”

“Tallmadge was founded in 1807: Mount Vernon, Ohio, was founded in 1805,” Wallace noted. “It is also a square with a circle to get around. Might it be the real granddaddy of Ohio? I grew up there.”

No argument here. I had two grandfathers. Why can’t a roundabout?

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Tallmadge Circle column generates a lot of reactions