AUBURN — Councilors on Monday reviewed plans for improvements around the Minot Avenue Rotary that would leave the road’s structure largely unchanged.

“The big concerns now are speed and pedestrian access,” City Manager Glenn Aho said. “We’d like to slow traffic down, and make it easier for people to walk.”

Aho presented a nine-point plan of small improvements, ranging from better signs along the corridor to narrowing some of the busy streets feeding into the pattern.

The rotary combines traffic southbound from downtown, northbound on Washington Avenue and eastbound from Minot Avenue.

Much of the work would be paid with $105,200 from the Maine Department of Transportation.

A 2000 study of area traffic patterns showed that many people view the Rotary area as a traffic snarl and avoid it, choosing to detour around Court Street. The two-lane Court Street had 14,517 average daily car trips compared to 10,825 trips on four-lane Minot Avenue, according to the study.

The rotary area seems to be the problem, according to the study. Cars headed into Auburn on Minot Avenue are diverted onto Washington Street south, then back onto Washington Street north before being allowed to continue along Minot Avenue.

But neighbors, businesses and residents in the area don’t have a big problem with the traffic pattern, and councilors were skeptical of making changes.

“If it’s not broken, I don’t see why we should change it,” Councilor Dan Herrick said.

Staff noted that cars traveling in the busy Rotary had eight accidents between January 2009 and February 2010 — about one accident for every one million cars.

Neighbors agreed.

“We don’t want to see changes, because we don’t want to make things worse,” said Dan Guerin, president of Maine Oxy. “That said, I don’t think putting up more signs will make things worse.”

Aho said that staff would meet with people in that area next week. They plan to bring a report to councilors for a second workshop, before voting on changes.

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