SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Changes to a pair of intersections in the heart of Sioux Falls could become permanent.

“We’ve had a lot of feedback from the Cathedral neighborhood on wanting to try to do different things to slow traffic down through the neighborhood,” said Heath Hoftiezer, traffic operations engineer with the City of Sioux Falls.

A circle in the middle of the intersection at 9th Street and Duluth Avenue just west of downtown is catching some Sioux Falls drivers by surprise.

“I just think it’s probably in a weird spot,” Cassie Boyd of Sioux Falls said. “Random, I guess.”

But there’s a reason why it’s here.

“We’re trying out some different traffic circles in the core of the city right now in attempt to try to calm traffic, slow traffic down and get people to kind of think about how they’re driving through the area,” Hoftiezer said.

There’s a second traffic circle nearby at the intersection of 9th Street and Prairie Avenue; the circles went in on Monday. An element to note about them is that if drivers want to take a left as they approach the circle, they have to go all the way around if they’re going to go that direction.

“They operate like a roundabout where we have yield signs as you’re approaching them,” Hoftiezer said. “There’s a little circular intersection in the center, and you basically go to your right and you travel around the circle to whichever direction you want to exit at.”

They’re temporary now but could become permanent fixtures.

“What we gather from data from the cameras and from the speed data that we’re going to be gathering in the next couple of weeks, we’re going to use that to determine if we should proceed with a project to put these in place permanently,” Hoftiezer said.