Nearly shovel-ready roundabout design wins first place at Capstone Design Expo

Team Stryd Transportation poses for a photo just after they learned they had won first place among School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's teams at the spring 2016 Capstone Design Expo. They designed a roundabout for0 a tricky intersection at Holly Springs and Old Canton roads in Cobb County, Georgia. Pictured from left to right, Assistant Professor Kari Watkins, who presented the award, and team members Lilian Ayala, Sage Roberts, John Bolen and Ryan Liu. The big guy in the front is, of course, Buzz. (Photo: Joshua Stewart)
Team Stryd Transportation poses for a photo just after they learned they had won first place among School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's teams at the spring 2016 Capstone Design Expo. They designed a roundabout for0 a tricky intersection at Holly Springs and Old Canton roads in Cobb County, Georgia. Pictured from left to right, Assistant Professor Kari Watkins, who presented the award, and team members Lilian Ayala, Sage Roberts, John Bolen and Ryan Liu. The big guy in the front is, of course, Buzz. (Photo: Joshua Stewart)
 

A design for a tricky roundabout in Cobb County, Georgia, won the top prize for School of Civil and Environmental Engineering projects at the spring 2016 Capstone Design Expo April 26.

Created by civil engineering majors Lilian Ayala, John Bolen, Ryan Liu and Sage Roberts, the roundabout design for the intersection of Holly Springs and Old Canton roads in Marietta, Georgia, is virtually shovel ready. The team has already presented its work to the Cobb County Department of Transportation, which will put together the final pieces of the construction and engineering plan.

The students said they knew they had done good work when people who live in the area where the roundabout will be built came to their display at the expo to learn about the project and ask them questions.

The roundabout designed by the Strud Transportation team for their senior design project.
 

Roberts said the design presented challenges, given the volume of traffic coming through the intersection. That meant the team couldn’t simply build a one-lane roundabout for the area.

“Coming [south on] Holly Springs, there are so many cars going straight and so many cars turning left that the roundabout needed more capacity, so we had to add an extra lane,” Roberts said. “But not on the other parts, because we don’t need that capacity there.

“It’s kind of a partial multi-lane roundabout, so it has been interesting because there hasn’t been as much guidance or as many examples [to follow].”

The team, which calls itself Stryd Transportation, also included accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists, something noted — and praised — by Assistant Professor Kari Watkins as she visited with the team at the expo.

All four students are interested in careers in transportation. Ayala said that’s why they chose the project in the first place.

“We picked it based on what we could see ourselves doing in the future,” she said. “We thought this would be more relevant to what we would be doing in our full-time jobs, and also, this gave us the opportunity to work with Cobb County.”

For now, they’re all planning to graduate in May or December this year, and at least three of the four will enter the B.S./M.S. program to earn their master’s degree.

This is the first time the School has selected a first-place team at the Capstone Design Expo and only the second time teams from the School have participated.

Read about all four CEE teams that participated in this year’s expo.