Investigation · Year one

The hunt for the engineer responsible for the roundabout continues

Filed from a parked car with a good view of the island

This paper has spent considerable resources trying to find the person who drew the island on Fanning Bayou Drive. We have found the island. We have not found the person.

The structure sits at 30.2784, -85.6744. It is not a roundabout. It is not a median. It is a shape, and the sign on it says bear right, and the tire tracks on it say otherwise.

Our most deep undercover journalists have been at this for a year. One of them now lives there.

We submitted a records request and got a map. The map showed the island. We asked who drew it and were told that information is in the map.

A source close to the situation, meaning a person who drives past it daily, described the design as "confident." Another called it "a suggestion made in concrete." Both asked not to be named, which was easy, because we do not print names.

The investigation remains open. The island remains. Everyone keeps going left.

Correction

A previous edition referred to the island as a roundabout

The Dispatch regrets nothing

Readers wrote in. The structure on Fanning Bayou Drive is not a roundabout, and the structure at the other end is. Both are treated identically by traffic, which is to say ambitiously.

The Dispatch will continue to call whichever one you are complaining about the roundabout.