Few intersections in Colorado Springs are as notorious as the one that is home to the big, bronze statue of the city’s founder, Gen. William Jackson Palmer.

The iconic statue, which depicts Palmer perched atop his horse, Diablo, sits smack-dab in the middle of the intersection of Platte and Nevada avenues, and it has long been a source of local controversy, with some residents describing it as a traffic hazard and calling for its removal.

The intersection has been the site of numerous injury crashes, some deadly. And it’s been a pain point for drivers for decades. Despite the controversy, city officials have made it pretty clear: Moving the statue, which has sat in that spot for nearly a century, is not an option.

Last September, in an effort to make the intersection safer, traffic engineers decided to prohibit left-hand turns onto Nevada for cars traveling either direction on Platte, citing a higher-than-expected crash rate for drivers making a left turn at the intersection.

This week, the city said it was studying a different option: a roundabout.

City traffic engineer Todd Frisbie confirmed in an emailed statement Friday that the city had “launched a feasibility study to explore if a roundabout could and should be installed.”

The announcement comes months after a local group, Beautiful Colorado Springs, launched a petition calling for a roundabout at the intersection.

Last year, a separate petition on change.org called for the statue’s removal. That petition was started by a family member of Isadore Romero, a 67-year-old Colorado Springs man who was hit and killed while riding his motorcycle in the intersection last April. Police said a vehicle collided with the motorcycle while making a left turn at the intersection.

The Palmer statue garnered more attention last week, after a short video about the intersection was posted to TikTok and Instagram by Streetcraft, a content creator that publishes videos about urban planning and traffic engineering.

The video amassed millions of views on both platforms and depicted what a roundabout could look like at the intersection.

“The fact that this intersection isn’t already a roundabout is crazy,” one person commented on TikTok. “We’ll do ANYTHING but build a roundabout here,” wrote another.

Cully Radvillas, who started the Beautiful Colorado Springs group, reached out to Streetcraft about creating the rendering. His group meets monthly and focuses on land use, transportation and walkability issues.

It’s about “making the city more walkable and people friendly, so people don’t need a car to make every trip, to run every errand,” said Radvillas. “A place can’t be walkable if people don’t feel safe walking on the street.”

Radvillas co-founded the group with Zuri Horowitz, who started the COS Cars Kill Instagram account. The group advocates for safer streets and tracks crashes throughout the city. According to its website, their goal is to “highlight the negatives of car-centered planning in Colorado Springs/El Paso County.”

Their petition calling for a roundabout at Nevada and Platte had 435 signatures as of Saturday, with 330 of those being from local residents.

Frisbie, the traffic engineer, said in the statement that a “roundabout could increase safety while also allowing the historic statue to remain in place.”

“Studies show that roundabouts help reduce fatal crashes by 90% and pedestrian crashes 30%-40%. This feasibility study, which will take up to a year to finish, will help the city understand if it is possible to build a roundabout, what the impact to the community would be, and how much it would cost.”

Few intersections in Colorado Springs are as notorious as the one that is home to the big, bronze statue of the city’s founder, Gen. William Jackson Palmer.

The iconic statue, which depicts Palmer perched atop his horse, Diablo, sits smack-dab in the middle of the intersection of Platte and Nevada avenues, and it has long been a source of local controversy, with some residents describing it as a traffic hazard and calling for its removal.

The intersection has been the site of numerous injury crashes, some deadly. And it’s been a pain point for drivers for decades. Despite the controversy, city officials have made it pretty clear: Moving the statue, which has sat in that spot for nearly a century, is not an option.

In September, in an effort to make the intersection safer, traffic engineers decided to prohibit left-hand turns onto Nevada for cars traveling either direction on Platte, citing a higher-than-expected crash rate for drivers making a left turn at the intersection.

Last week, the city said it was studying a different option: a roundabout.

City traffic engineer Todd Frisbie confirmed via an emailed statement Friday that the city had “launched a feasibility study to explore if a roundabout could and should be installed.”

The announcement comes months after a local group, Beautiful Colorado Springs, launched a petition calling for a roundabout at the intersection.

Last year, a separate petition on change.org called for the statue’s removal. That petition was started by a family member of Isadore Romero, a 67-year-old Colorado Springs man who was hit and killed while riding his motorcycle in the intersection last April. Police said a vehicle collided with the motorcycle while making a left turn at the intersection.

The Palmer statue garnered more attention last week, after a short video about the intersection was posted to TikTok and Instagram by Streetcraft, a content creator that publishes videos about urban planning and traffic engineering.

The video amassed millions of views on both platforms, and it depicted what a roundabout could look like at the intersection.

“The fact that this intersection isn’t already a roundabout is crazy,” one person commented on TikTok. “We’ll do ANYTHING but build a roundabout here,” wrote another.

Cully Radvillas, who started the Beautiful Colorado Springs group, reached out to Streetcraft about creating the rendering. His group meets monthly and focuses on land use, transportation and walkability issues.

It’s about “making the city more walkable and people friendly, so people don’t need a car to make every trip, to run every errand,” Radvillas said. “A place can’t be walkable if people don’t feel safe walking on the street.”

Radvillas co-founded the group with Zuri Horowitz, who started the COS Cars Kill Instagram account. The group advocates for safer streets and tracks crashes throughout the city. According to its website, their goal is to “highlight the negatives of car-centered planning in Colorado Springs/El Paso County.”

Their petition calling for a roundabout at Nevada and Platte had 435 signatures as of Saturday, with 330 of those being from local residents.

Frisbie, the traffic engineer, said in the statement that a “roundabout could increase safety while also allowing the historic statue to remain in place.”

“Studies show that roundabouts help reduce fatal crashes by 90% and pedestrian crashes 30%-40%. This feasibility study, which will take up to a year to finish, will help the city understand if it is possible to build a roundabout, what the impact to the community would be, and how much it would cost.”