I’ve been driving the commute from Belgrade into Bozeman for thirty-three years now. Back in ’91, you could get from the outskirts to Main Street without seeing a single piece of circular concrete. You drove in a straight line, you waited your turn at a stop sign, and you arrived at your destination with your equilibrium entirely intact.

Lately, it seems like the city planners have been watching too many European travel documentaries. Every time I turn a corner, I’m greeted by another roundabout. They’re popping up in fields that used to house perfectly productive alfalfa, replacing the honest, reliable geometry of the four-way stop.

I’m told these circles are safer. Maybe they are, if you’re the type of driver who gets nervous when someone looks you in the eye at a red light. But a roundabout requires a level of interpretive dance that I don’t think belongs in the Gallatin Valley. You have to signal to get out, yield to people who are already inside, and navigate a circle while someone in a Land Cruiser with a roof rack is trying to merge in at twenty miles per hour. It’s chaotic. It makes a man yearn for the predictability of a flashing yellow light.

My neighbor, Dale, who still runs a few head of cattle near the frontage road, told me the other day he thinks the roundabouts are just a way to make us drive slower so we have more time to look at the new condo developments. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but he’s got a point. You can’t exactly tear through an intersection when you’re busy trying to decide if you’re supposed to treat a yield sign like a suggestion or a court order.

The worst part is that these roundabouts are getting bigger. They’re becoming these landscaped islands of expensive river rock and drought-resistant fescue. It feels like we’re trying to turn our transit corridors into botanical gardens. I’d much rather have a simple, gray, functional intersection that gets me to the Co-op before the parking lot fills up with people who are also driving very slowly.

We keep trying to build a city that looks like a postcard, but we’re forgetting that a postcard doesn’t have to handle five o’clock traffic on a Tuesday. I’m not saying we need to pave over the whole valley, but I do think a little less circular thinking might help us get where we’re going a bit faster.

If we keep going at this rate, the whole valley is just going to be one giant, spiraling driveway. And frankly, I’m starting to get a little dizzy.

Gerald Fencepost has lived in Belgrade since 1991 and has strong feelings about most intersections.