The City of Lincoln sought engineering services for transportation improvements along Salt Creek Roadway at 9th and 10th Streets as part of the city’s West Haymarket Redevelopment Final Design project—a major redevelopment initiative in downtown Lincoln. Olsson Associates, as part of the Lincoln Haymarket Infrastructure Team (LHIT), was selected to provide design and construction services for the Salt Creek Roadway improvements.

The project’s goal was to provide a new access point for the redevelopment’s proposed north parking area that would build upon the existing transportation network and provide efficient and safe access. The project bordered Memorial Stadium’s main entrances on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus and posed significant potential conflicts, including the Champions Club parking lot, the 10th Street bridge, BNSF mainline tracks, the I-180 bridges, and the Star City Federal parking lot.

To remedy these issues, Olsson designed and helped oversee the construction of a unique, double roundabout design. This design successfully minimized traffic flow, provided functionality and safety improvements to the transportation network, and reduced the impacts to adjacent properties.

In addition to the roundabout design, Olsson also provided right-of-way coordination, survey, lighting, and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) design.

The roundabouts opened three weeks ahead of schedule in August of 2011—just in time for the start of fall classes at UNL and ahead of UNL’s season-opening football game. The Haymarket Double Roundabout project received the 2012 Engineering Excellence Honor award from the American Council of Engineering Companies’ Nebraska Chapter.

Click here to see a weekly time lapse of the project construction.