VALPARAISO | Two of the city's worst intersections will be improved as part of the planned construction of the roundabout at LaPorte Avenue, Sturdy Road and Lincolnway this summer.

Chief Deputy City Engineer Tim Burkman provided the city's Traffic and Safety Committee with a list of the worst intersections Tuesday, and the LaPorte Avenue/Sturdy Road location easily took the "Most Dented" award with 21 accidents in 2006. LaPorte and the Ind. 49 Bypass was next with 15.

Accidents at intersections are such a problem that the list of the city's 10 worst locations for collisions actually has 12 because of a four-way tie for ninth place. Calumet Avenue, U.S. 30 and LaPorte each had three intersections.

The Calumet crossings were at Evans Avenue (12 accidents), Glendale Boulevard (eight) and at the five-points intersection with Roosevelt Road and Vale Park Road (eight). The Glendale/Calumet crossing had been near the top of the list until improvements were completed in 2005.

The U.S. 30 intersections with the too-close encounters of the insurance kind were at Strongbow Centre Drive (11), Washington Street (10) and Horseprairie Avenue (10). The third LaPorte intersection on the list was at Silhavy Road (nine).

The Sturdy Road crossings at Lincolnway (eight) and at LaPorte will be addressed with construction of the roundabout. That project is expected to take more than a year to complete, but it is expected to facilitate the flow of traffic and drastically reduce the number of accidents once drivers adjust to it.

The other intersections were at Roosevelt and Glendale (10) and Jefferson Street and Morgan Boulevard (eight). Burkman said the number of accidents in 2006 was 478, a decrease of 61 from 2005 and only three more than the city had in 2004.