WARWICK –– A circle of one-way traffic zooms around the center of the city every day, a dizzying choreography of speed, harrowing maneuvers and peril for pedestrians.

Cars and trucks jockey for position, driving diagonally across four lanes as they cut each other off. From the morning commute to the congested trek home, the area is in perpetual motion with a lot of honking, screeching of brakes and creative hand gestures.

What should be the city’s premier downtown area under the watchful gaze of the stately City Hall clock tower has become a speedway, known to drivers from across Rhode Island for the annoying one-way circular layout and the requisite daredevil driving.

Welcome to Apponaug.

Changes to the traffic flow in Apponaug should benefit businesses in the Warwick neighborhood

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“It’s crazy,” says Mayor Scott Avedisian, 44, who can watch the action from his office window. “This whole one-way circulator is a ‘temporary’ traffic fix that was instituted when I was about 10 years old and we still have it.”

The big oblong block –– which in addition to City Hall includes the police station and fire station –– was made a one-way route in the mid 1970s when the city was struggling with increased east-west traffic.

In an attempt to solve the problem, which was mostly the result of more and more people wanting to access the newly constructed Route 95 that crossed over Centerville Road, the state and the city decided to make the roads that loop around Apponaug all one way.

The result was a downtown “circulator” made up of Post Road, Greenwich Avenue and Veterans Memorial Drive.

From the outset, the “solution” was hailed by many for easing congestion and cursed by others for hurting businesses and endangering pedestrians.

In the decades since, almost all accolades have fallen away and left just the headaches.

Steadily increasing traffic over the years has added up to more than 24,000 cars a day circling the village, according to figures from the state Department of Transportation. And since most people are zipping around the village as a way of getting somewhere else, speed and recklessness have increased.

“Oh, you mean the ‘mini-Indy,’ ” is how Lauren Slocum, president of the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, refers to the Apponaug circulator, employing an oft-used comparison to the Indianapolis 500 racetrack.

The chamber’s headquarters sits on Post Road across the street from City Hall and just east of the post office. It’s the part of the village that looks most like Main Street U.S.A., but three lanes of traffic rushing by in one direction has pretty much made it a death zone for businesses and shoppers, says Slocum.

“You’re taking your life in your hands,” she says of people who park on the right side of the street and then have to wait for a traffic lull to open their driver’s door.

The state has been talking about reconfiguring the circulator for more than 20 years, but the concept didn’t really solidify until a few years ago, when about $22 million in federal funding was secured by former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee who, in his prior role as mayor, had long fought to get the one-way circulator changed.

By working with city officials and local businesses, the DOT has come up with an extreme makeover for Apponaug that will not only restore two-way traffic to most streets, but will include a new bypass and five “roundabouts” to eliminate dangerous corners and intersections.

The project, with a price tag now estimated at more than $27 million, will upgrade all existing roads and convert all traffic to two-way, except for the short stretch of Post Road from the intersection with Centerville Road to the juncture with West Shore Road (Williams Corner).

Construction is about two years away, but the planning timetable is on track and there was much joy in the village earlier in April when the behemoth brick storage building that was part of the old Apponaug Co. textile mill complex was knocked down to begin making way for the bypass.

It was the first visible sign that change was really coming, and Avedisian and principal City Planner Richard Crenca say it can’t happen soon enough. In addition to allowing traffic to move smoothly and safely through the city, they say the redesign will make possible the resurrection of Apponaug village as a viable downtown area.

The biggest change will be the construction of a new Apponaug bypass from the intersection of Greenwich Avenue and Veterans Memorial Drive to the juncture of Toll Gate and Centerville Roads, where the Bagel Factory sandwich shop is located. The restaurant is expected to remain, DOT officials say, but it will be fronted by a circular roundabout rather than the congestion-prone V-shaped intersection that is there now.

The bypass, which will give easy access to Route 95, is planned to drain nearly 20,000 cars per day from Apponaug, making the village livable — and walkable — once again.

DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin said that while the fundamentals of the redesign are in place, the next two years will be spent refining details, acquiring portions of any private property that is needed, demolishing vacant buildings and obtaining environmental permits.

St. Martin said that even after the project is completed –– roughly two years after the start of construction –– the change in driving patterns will be so dramatic that the city and DOT will have to work together to educate drivers and pedestrians on how to navigate the two-way streets and roundabouts.

“It will definitely take some re-education,” Avedisian said, “because basically we’ve had a dysfunctional pattern for 30-plus years and people have gotten used to it.”

One of the biggest changes for Rhode Islanders, DOT officials said, is the introduction of roundabouts, which are relatively new to the state, although they have become popular elsewhere in the country. Basically a petite cousin of rotaries or traffic circles, roundabouts have been proven to keep traffic flowing while also reducing speed, the officials said.

According to the DOT, which brought in national roundabout experts to consult on the Apponaug project, the circles are usually about one-third the size of a typical rotary and use a sharper curve on entry to calm travel speeds. Also, because most are two lanes, traffic can usually keep flowing during high-volume periods rather than backing up, as often happens when drivers try to enter one-lane rotaries at busy times.

In addition to the roundabout on Centerville Road, the Apponaug redesign plan calls for one at the intersection of Greenwich Avenue and Veterans Memorial Parkway, one at Post Road and Centerville Road (Apponaug Four Corners), one where West Shore Road converges with Post Road and one where Post Road and the Post Road Connector feed into Veterans Memorial Parkway.

“Right now, traffic on a Friday afternoon can quickly back up one-quarter to one-half mile at the light at Apponaug Four Corners,” Avedisian said. “We also have backups on Centerville Road and the roundabouts will help ease that congestion.”

State and city officials estimate that when the reconfiguration is done, the daily volume of traffic that passes by City Hall on Post Road will drop from an average of 25,000 cars to 4,000 to 5,0000.

And for the businesses along that stretch, less will definitely end up being more, according to Avedisian and Jeff Gofton, president of the Apponaug Area Improvement Association.

“It’s going to allow us to reclaim a historic downtown village,” Avedisian said. “With less cars whizzing through there, people will get the idea that it’s safe to park and walk there.”

Although that stretch of Post Road will remain one-way in an easterly direction, it will be reduced to one travel lane with wider parking shoulders on both sides, and crosswalks and other traffic-calming measures, Crenca said.

“Right now there is nothing to invite you to get out of your car there –– you’re risking losing your car door or a leg at certain times of day,” Gofton said. “This is a case where high traffic volume actually works against businesses.

“Right now so many people are fighting to get through Apponaug that they’re not trying to get to it. We want to make it a distinct place that is a destination.”

bpoliche@projo.com