That's about as entertaining as Juneau's new traffic-control structure gets most days. Still, it's a beautiful vantage point. And it could be even better. Right now, the inside of the roundabout is a blank patch of grass.

"That would be nice if they fixed it up out there," Holloway said. "They could landscape it and make it pretty."

A handful of guerrilla artists have taken it upon themselves to decorate the space from time to time. On Halloween, a pumpkin-man cropped up, complete with lit jack-o'-lanterns. On New Year's Eve, the roundabout featured a giant champagne bottle. During the Alaska Folk Festival, the artists set up an 8-foot-tall fiddler.

COURTESY OF ALASKAROUNDABOUTS.COM   ANCHORAGE: Lounsbury & Associates helped the municipality of Anchorage design the four-way roundabout at Southport Drive and Washington Avenue with a gently sloping wall and a collection of trees.

Holloway's neighbor, Bob Funk, remembers the Christmas tree that was set up in the roundabout last December.

But more notable now are the pair of tire tracks - muddy, watery troughs - that bisect the grass. Besides decorating the roundabout, some are also joyriding right through the middle of it.

In an artistic town such as Juneau, it seems natural that someone would want to decorate the Douglas roundabout. What better space for landscaping, a sculpture, a totem pole?

"It might keep people from driving through the middle of it," Funk said.

As of now, there are no state or city plans for a roundabout beautification project.

The roundabout, a state-controlled right-of-way, replaced a North Douglas Highway stop sign a year ago in an effort to keep a slow but steady flow of traffic moving through the three-way intersection by the bridge. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is responsible for mowing the patch of grass and cleaning up any litter in the circle.

"Generally, if we see trash we clean it up," said Chris Morrow, project planner with DOT/PF. "We don't want people thinking they can get into that inner island. It's unsafe."

DOT/PF has no plans to add landscaping or any sort of sculpture to the middle of the roundabout, but there has been some small talk about beautifying the space, Morrow said.

COURTESY OF ROUNDABOUTSUSA.COM   BATH, ENGLAND: England ushered in the "modern roundabout" era in 1963, according to roundaboutsusa.com. The country began constructing the circular travel ways and granting the vehicles in the middle the right-of-way.

The city has no plans to add flowers or landcaping to the roundabout, said Bob Grochow, city parks superintendent.

Ultimately, DOT/PF would have to permit any project in the roundabout space. Morrow said the department would be open to the idea.

"It's not something that we have funding for, but if there was somebody that came forward with a proposal, we'd entertain that," Morrow said. "If the local government was involved we'd be willing to do something like that."

"I wish we had unlimited resources to beautify," he said. "The (city) already has a program for doing that and this would be a nice opportunity to put something there, whether it's permanent or even annual flowers on the median."

As of January, there were about 1,000 roundabouts in the United States, according to www.roundaboutsusa.com, a site run by Provo, Utah, engineer Bill Baranowski. The site anticipates thousands more being constructed "annually early in the next century."

France boasts more than 25,000 roundabouts.

"They're very concerned about what kind of art to put in their roundabouts," Baranowski said. "They've got every category of art you could imagine: fountains, sailboats, sculptures."

Baranowski has helped design more than 70 roundabouts since 1995.

In Rexburg, Idaho, a community that bills itself as a "family-oriented city," city planners quizzed Baranowski about constructing a roundabout sculpture of frolicking children and adults.

"Roundabouts are a great opportunity to put art in your city," Baranowski said. "Grass in the middle is pretty good, but I believe there's a lot more you can do. The only thing is, don't make it look so pretty that you're going to have pedestrians running out there."

The roundabouts in Bend, Ore., were recently honored at the national convention of Americans for the Arts as one of the "37 most innovative approaches to public art in the country." A nonprofit group, Art In Public Places, has provided money for the art.

There are some 20 roundabouts in the central Oregon town. The latest piece, a sculpture called "Bueno Homage to the Buckeroo," featuring a bronze horse descending a rocky outcrop, was set up in a roundabout at Ninth Street and Newport Avenue in December. For more, visit artinpublicplaces.com.

In Payson, Ariz., a group of concerned citizens, the Payson Gateway Project, has banded together to raise funds for a 12-foot-tall bronze elk sculpture in its 15-month-old Highway 87 roundabout.

"We heard there was a roundabout coming, and our town staff had not planned anything very pretty for our city, just gravel and two trees," project organizer Jeanie Langham said. "We didn't care if they had it or didn't have it. We just didn't want an ugly circle in our town."

Project members pitched their design to city leaders and the Arizona Department of Transportation.

"(Arizona Department of Transportation) just screamed," Langham said. "They thought people would die, driving past and looking at it. They thought people would go out there and want their picture taken with it."

COURTESY OF danaemiller.com   BEND, ORE.: Danae Bennet Miller designed "Bueno, Homage to the Buckaroo," a large, bronzed horse, for the roundabout at Newport Avenue and 14th Street in Bend, Ore. The project, just one of Bend's innovative, award-winning roundabout art schemes, was installed in December.

Much of the design has been donated: an outcrop of 4-ton, lichen-covered boulders; ponderosa pines and oak trees; granite, and native grasses.

Project members are trying to raise money for labor and the giant, bronze elk. They've sold six replica maquettes of the elk at $5,500 apiece; and 21 smaller desk-size elk at $2,500 each.

"This would be the gateway to the (Mogollon Rim) and our community," Langham said.

There does seem to be a delicate art to choosing the proper design for a roundabout.

In Clearwater, Fla., a "massive wedding cake-style fountain," proved to be a poor choice, according to the St. Petersburg Times. The fountain was built at a tremendous cost, but ultimately blocked people's view around the circle. Water from the fountain also splashed on windshields.

Modifying the design and removing the fountain costs hundreds of thousands more.

"The big problem was that it was too close to the circle," said Baranowski, who visited the roundabout during his honeymoon. "It didn't match the site."

COURTESY OF ROUNDABOUTSUSA.COM   AVON, COLO.: Avon, down Interstate 70 from Vail, built five roundabouts in 1998 near the Beaver Creek Mountain ski resort . This one includes a pack of stampeding horses.

Stout runs alaskaroundabouts.com. He started his site in 2001, when his firm, Lounsbury & Associates, Inc., helped the municipality of Anchorage design that city's first roundabout - a four-way intersection at Southport Drive and Washington Avenue.

Stout hoped the site would help acquaint drivers with the concept behind roundabouts, but it has also evolved into an interesting case-by-case analysis of Alaska roundabout design.

"A roundabout is not a good place to have people walking back and forth, but it is a good place to have something artistic or nice," Stout said. "The challenge is to do something nice on an automobile scale that does not attract pedestrians to the center."

The Southport roundabout posed an interesting design challenge. Engineers were concerned that drivers would see another vehicle on the opposite side of the circle and misjudge how long it would take that driver to come all the way around.

"We didn't want everybody to get timid," Stout said.

The solution was to create a gently sloping wall on the inside of the circle's truck apron. Various trees were planted in the center, obscuring the view across.

"Part of what it does, it focuses the driver's view on the immediate left," Stout said. "For the most part, unless you have an extremely long vehicle, or slow acceleration or perhaps slick streets, you only need vision to the immediate left to take a gap and get into the traffic stream. That opens up the possibility of some really nice sculptures in the middle of the circle."