American town adopts Roundabouts and saves money

Our nearest city wants to install a few roundabouts but are having trouble with real estate. They are all existing locations with buildings right up to the corners.

Tom

 

I love roundabouts. There are a few in Olympia, where we drive a lot. However, I have driven with /or near people who do not have a clue as to how to drive through them... and they can be dangerous!

I think as more communities try them, more will see how they can work for them, both in reducing incidents, but also in smoothing out traffic snarls.

 

Americans aren't what you would call overly (or even moderately) skilled drivers. That's why our parking spaces are so big, our roads are so bloomin wide and we festoon our cars with bumper sensors and backup cameras.
It's not all bad. We have the real estate for the wider roads, and at least we drive on the right side of the road.
Having driven on the continent some I've come to really appreciate rotaries (or roundabouts, or circulars) and it would be really cool to retrofit as many of our intersections as real estate permits with them.
However (comma!) like world peace, a balanced budget, and energy independence......it just isn't going to happen over here in my lifetime...at least not on a large scale.

 

This is quite amusing, since here in New Jersey where "traffic circles" as we call them were once everywhere they are being replaced with varied, hybrid sorts of intersections with turn lanes, lights, etc. For the most part the changes are hailed as improvements, as the circles were OK with light volume, slow speed traffic but as volumes and speeds increased they became increasingly more dangerous.

 

We recently had a roundabout installed here. Of course, there was a huge cry from the "Oh nos! Change is scary and bad!" crowd, but fortunately The Powers That Be ignored them. Now everybody loves it (except for a small but vocal minority who confessed to never actually had been on it).

 

If we actually had tests of these skills (or lack thereof) and the process of getting a license was less of an admin. practice and more an actual test...

When I tested for my GA license (my FL was long expired, perk of being military) the woman was astounded as to how well I could drive a manual...like its some kind of voodoo.

 

They are going crazy in Anchorage building these roundabouts. They tried one about four years ago and got mixed feed back and now there are at least five. They are not bad in the summer but once they are snow/ice covered, they are more of a challenge.

 

Roundabouts are becoming more common here in the U.S.at least in the Midwest. There is resistance, but the studies show it improves traffic flow and that's hard to ignore. I was on a "citizens advisory group" for a local road that's being updated, and talking with one of the engineers after a meeting, they added a roundabout recently and are contemplating a couple more in our county. As more and more people come into contact with them, I think the scary unknown factor will go down and people will become more accepting.

 

That is encouraging. With the number of people in the US that don't seem to have grasped the meaning of stop signs or correct lane usage, I haven't been very optimistic about the practicality of roundabouts here.

I liked them in Britain, they make a lot more sense than regular intersections under a lot of conditions.

I had a hotel room a few floors above a traffic circle in Britain once. It was interesting to watch because everyone (nearly) did exactly what they are supposed to do in a traffic circle, poetry in motion.

 

I grew up in Boston and roundabouts are pretty common there. When I was young the driver entering had the right of way, at some point in the 70's or early 80's that was changed to what is the rule just about everywhere else - the driver in the roundabout has the right of way and entering drivers must yield. Even more than 25 years later drivers are bad about right of way.

In Europe and other places where the drivers are better at following the rules of the road they work great. In Boston they are so-so. Please God do not let them start putting them here in Philly - the drivers here are the absolute worst I have ever seen and I doubt most drivers have ever heard of right of way.

 

They are popping up all over the place here in Minnesota... most of the time, it works pretty well, but there are glaring examples of those who definitely voted against the idea. They are usually the ones who go up and over the little garden on the top of them when they want to go straight through, or they just blare into one going counter-clockwise when they want to take a left - usually driving H3s, pickups, or an occasional beat-up Mercedes.

 

Once drivers are used to them, roundabouts work pretty well. They're cheaper than using signals, generally safer for the drivers, and regulate traffic flow better than stop signs. They work particularly well for 'odd' intersections like three and five ways, and where the roads don't meet at 90 degrees.

They don't necessarily improve pedestrian safety.

 

Boston drivers shouldn't be allowed on the road.



I don't much care for British roundabouts: they go around them the wrong way.

Tom

 

Last year, twice.

I thought those were the rules of the road in France.

French and to a greater extent Italian drivers can be a bit unruly, but their level of competence seems higher than that of American drivers.

When USians speak of good European drivers, I suspect they are thinking more of Brits, Germans and other Northern European countries (except France and French speaking Belgium.

I'm not knocking the French, I love going to the country and the people are fun to be around....it's just that they tend to color outside the lines. I also find French drivers tamer than they were 45 years ago.

 

Since nobody in my area seems to understand right-of-way or merging, perhaps metering lights would help. Metering lights seem to help with merging onto a freeway.

So a metered roundabout would have sensors detecting traffic both in the roundabout and at each entry/exit. The traffic control computer would give a green at each entry timed to optimize merging.

Ah, the American way. Take a simple idea and make the implementation complicated... and profitable. :usa2:

 

It has been years since I have been on the "Continent" and I have never driven a car there - the drivers in both Ireland and England were very considerate with roundabouts.

 

Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but Boston drivers just have a bad reputation - they are far better than the other places that I have lived (New York and Philly) and in my travels find they are on a par with most other big city drivers - Chicago, SF, LA.

 

Roundabouts are great for light to moderate traffic. Not so great for heavy intersections. Our smallish town (pop. 80,000) has exactly one. Certainly could use a few more. Love them.