American town adopts Roundabouts and saves money

We recently moved from Anchorage to the Olympia area and I was SHOCKED by the number of roundabouts here. I hated the one I had to travel in Anchorage - not using them very much made them scary.

Olympia has a few and nearby Lacey has LOTS - at first I cussed every time I went driving around. Now I love love love them, and I find myself getting angry at stoplights, wishing there were a roundabout instead. It really is just a matter of getting used to them, I think, and they make things much smoother. Consider me a convert.

 

Traffic circles are technically different than roundabouts

Roundabout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you think you have encountered a roundabout, make sure it's not a traffic circle or vice versa. They are rare here.

 

we call them rotaries and have tousands of them. they have a yield sign entering, but no 'confusing sprawl of signals, stop signs and concentric lanes,' does that make them roundabouts? boston drivers? when one of my kids was taking drivers ed., she was slowing to enter a rotary and the instructor yelled " don't slow down, the guy behind you will hit us!"

 

Watch for the Dalmatian Prius in a roundabout near you...

[This is our shopping day]

 

Yup, thankfully the Airport Circle, Marlton Circle, & Ellisburg Circle are history. They work well with slow speeds & light traffic but you won't find either in South Jersey. There are a couple on 70 in the Pinelands & one on 130 in Hightstown.

 

It's been awhile since I've driven in Boston, so things may have changed. In my experience Boston drivers were not bad drivers in the common sense, but showed an utter disregard for all traffic rules. Red lights, green lights - it made no difference - momentum would carry traffic through an intersection until some brave soul inched forward and caused a less brave soul to blink.

Merging was a manhood contest. There would be a 1.01 car length space for you to try and merge into, but the guy behind the space would accelerate and try to close it off before you could get into it. You had to avoid eye contact. The only way to merge was to make people think you would hit them.

The other damning comment about Boston driving involved insurance rates. I don't know if it's still this way, but back then Boston drivers "enjoyed" some of the highest rates in the country. This was for good reason.

A lot of the country has bad drivers that just don't know how to drive. Boston had decent drivers that made themselves aggressively bad through concerted effort. I didn't care for it.

Tom

 

the "circles" or "runabouts" addiction is regional.. they are more popular in New England then other parts of the country.. not sure about NW but not so much in the rest of the country.

 

Is Columbus Circle near Central Park, NY, the oldest in the country?

 

i always heard and believed boston area drivers were the worst until i started driving in other parts of the country. it seems pretty much the same in any large congested city.
as far as insurance rates here, i think we've had our issues over the years and a lot of companies won't come here because they say they lose money. we pay around a grand a year on average i would say. i'm paying $750. but i know people paying in the low teens.

 

"Trends"

BBC Says America is Falling in Love With Roundabouts; BBC is Full of Shit

BBC Says America is Falling in Love With Roundabouts; BBC is Full of Shit - New York News - Runnin' Scared

 

More and more of the rounabouts here in Washington State. Most people I know like them. What they don't like are the tentative drivers who do not know how to use them. I be liking the circles....

 

From the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety page Q&A: Roundabouts

Under the section "Do drivers favor roundabouts?"

That about sums it up.

There are a few rotaries in Maine, 2 in the capital Augusta. A couple of years ago they redesigned the smaller circle from a small 2-lane rotary to a design that spirals so that if you are in the correct lane when you approach you don't have to cross traffic once you've entered the rotary.

The company that re-designed the Cony Rotary has an image.

http://www.ourston.com/assets/images/Photos/Cony/cony3.jpg

I love it. But then, I'm a PFA so my opinion doesn't count.

 

I was sceptical when I first saw the design, but on the ground, as I wrote, the spiral layout makes it really simple.
- You get in lane before the roundabout.
- If your lane would spiral off before your exit you change lanes by hugging the centre.
- Otherwise you simply follow your lane off at your exit.

The key point of the design is eliminating lane changes across traffic, which is the biggest danger of 2+ lane roundabouts.

It also added a couple of filter lanes, with one in particular being one of the major flows.

Unfortunately, you can't see the new format on StreetView. It still has the old, standard 2-lane format.

 

In Scotland they had a roundabout with traffic lights ???

 

My first Summer on a motorcycle was in Edmonton, and I'd never seen traffic circles before. <shudder>

 

Not likely. That circle wasn't installed until 1905. Washington, DC had circles in the original plan from the 1790s, though many weren't built for decades. It appears the first "traffic circle" in the District was Washington Circle, 1856.