CAMBRIDGE — Rose Cole fears a big roundabout at King and Fountain streets will be overwhelmed with afternoon rush hour traffic from a growing city industrial park to the north.

“People will just be parked there in the afternoon, with all the traffic from Toyota and Loblaws and now RIM,” she said at a public information session Tuesday night.

She drives the single-lane roundabout at Blair and Fountain streets weekday mornings, on the way to Conestoga College. It’s usually clogged with traffic by 7 a.m., with no gaps for more cars to sneak in.

“I’m now there early, so I can beat it,” she said.

For her and others clustered around maps in the King Street Baptist Church hall, a roundabout in front of the historic Preston Springs hotel was overkill. Several people suggested widening the King-Fountain intersection so it’s big enough to easily handle trucks and keep the stoplights.

People were lined up outside before the doors opened at 5 p.m. At least 125 people stopped in to look over drawings and maps before it closed at 8:30 p.m.

Click here to view the information package handed out at the meeting, including the comment sheet officials collected from taxpayers.

Waterloo Region is nearing the end of an environmental assessment of options to fix the bottleneck entrance to old Preston. The winding road is hemmed in by commercial and heritage buildings, the Speed River bridge and must swallow transport trucks backing into and out of Dover Flour Mills.

The preferred solution includes sidewalks and on-road bike lanes along both sides of Shantz Hill, Fountain and King Streets. It also includes likely demolition of part of the Pines banquet centre.

More investigation into limiting left-turn lanes from Chopin Drive onto King are planned, at the request of Cambridge city officials, said Wayne Cheater, project manager.

As proposed, the plan costs upwards of $15 million. Regional politicians are expected to decide what will be done later this year. Even with speedy approval this year, any rebuilding couldn’t get underway until 2015, Cheater said.

Tim Krete doubted the plan for a roundabout and rejigged intersection at Shantz Hill Road would improve traffic flow.

“All that seems to be happening is they’re spending a lot of money for nothing,” he said.

His solution is closing Fountain Street at Highway 401. That forces all traffic to and from the industrial park around the Toyota factory to use already upgraded routes like Maple Grove Road, Hespeler Road and Highway 8 to reach Highway 401. Or motorists would avoid the area altogether.

Shirley Bowman shared Krete’s doubts about the roundabout plan — or any other solution to erase King Street traffic jams like the one that greeted visitors heading to the church.

“I think they came up with proposals because they had to come up with proposals,” said the co-ordinator of the Preston Towne Centre business improvement association.

The proposal swings Shantz Hill Road to the right going downhill, then sweeping four lanes of asphalt left to join Fountain Street. Two-lane Fountain Street from Blair would meet the curving intersection with stoplights, as are there now.

Lloyd Closs lives in a house beside the historic Jerry van Dyke Travel building, at the foot of Shantz Hill. He’s sure the new intersection will lop off much of his front yard for no good reason.

“I can see them putting in the roundabout, but not doing anything to Shantz Hill ... it’s fine the way it is.”

The roundabout had fans in Glenn and Anna Dance, five-year residents of the Kressview condominium tower that has its only driveway onto King near Fountain.

Today, making a left turn onto King is dangerous to the uninitiated. A roundabout would remove that danger and get traffic moving through the area, they said.

“It’s just super for us. We would just go right and around the roundabout and go where we wanted to go,” said Glenn Dance.

kswayze@cambridgereporter.com