Posted on 10/22/2012 7:52:22 PM PDT by logic101.net
Stop the roundabouts
The vast majority of us hate roundabouts. Unfortunately, the state Department of Transportation loves them, as do their close friends, the road builders. Why the road builders love them is simple - they can charge us 10 times more to put them in.
Sadly, the DOT prefers to make its friends happy rather than the taxpayers. They now have taken to trying to hide their plans from us by referring to them as "broad, looping, free-flowing."
Often we will be told that they work so well in Europe. However, Europe's idea of a big truck is about the size of a U-haul van. Our big trucks have 53-foot trailers and need the entire roundabout to get around them, creating a dangerous situation.
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Yep. The definition of insanity is to keep thinking one can improve on the American traditions. It’s not “economic development” to buck what’s worked for our fabulous nation. Instead it’s “arrested development” just like liberalism and commonism!!!
What the hell does a traffic circle have to do with driving on the wrong side of the road, the metric system, foreign languages, the love of God, mores and taboos?
For cripes sake, it’s just a road.
If you spent as much energy learning to drive as you do ranting incoherently you would be able to use a roundabout without crapping yourself from fear.
Stop touting change just for the sake of change. These stupid roundabouts have absolutely no redeeming social value!!!
“I like them, but here in New Jersey nobody calls them roundabouts! That sounds way too Britishy.
We call them circles.”
Roundabouts and circles are not the same thing. The rights of way are opposite.
Roundabouts beat the daylights out of four-way stops and some busy two-way stop intersections. And while the cost of the road may be higher, the cost of a traffic light is eliminated. A roundabout was built in my town at an intersection that was busy enough that the school buses couldn’t turn at rush hour, but that didn’t carry a load of traffic most of the day. Wrecks were frequent back when is was a standard two way stop intersection. I know of none since the roundabout opened. Works great.
Since interstates were developed in Germany, are they anti-American too? I don’t understand the blanket rejection. Some are good, some are great, some not-so-good.
Big roundabouts are far the most sensible way to route converging traffic in European cities where roads into the city converge on central points. When properly designed they can be much quicker and smoother to navigate at a major intersection than a traffic light would be. Tulsa has one such. All the rest of the roundabouts I have seen in the USofA aree clumsy attempts to emulate Europe. It doesn’t help that in this country they remain oddities and drivers are unaccustomed to them. It only takes a small percentage of drivers that don’t deal with them well to render them dangerous and to slow progress unnecessarily.
I even lightly rear-ended some lady who started into the roundabout with me following and then she suddenly stopped. When I asked her why she stopped she said she didn't know what the guy coming in on our left was going to do...(It was clear for us because the guy had stopped for traffic on his left)
There are places where they work great, and places where they are insufficient.
Just curious, do you work in brake-pad sales?
A few of them have gone up around South Bend, IN. They seem to help traffic flow in those cases. My daughter inadvertently went around one the wrong way while she was learning. Boy, did that ever piss off a couple drivers! But, in her defense, the arrows painted on roadway ahead of the circle showed a left turn/straight configuration. Glad I wasn’t there for a white knuckle experience.
Large semi-trailers at standard intersections must also hog up the road to do their thing. In the interest of better traffic efficiency I think circles are worth consideration, though they bear scrutiny due to governments’ tendency to waste and reward with gross mismanagement of funds.
If they limited them to residential areas I wouldn't care but WI DOT wants them at every intersection. Plus, if they are so wonderful, why does DOT have to hide their plans by calling them “...broad, looping, free flowing...”?
Some of them do make right turns easier, though.
Or Rome...
Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a roundabout in your community.
We’ve surely got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule!
We had one for over a year.
Probably someone with political sway, who didn’t like to stop at stop signs got our nanny city council to put in one.
It was too small and well off urban speeders left skid marks or worse on the center of the round about.
Finally, they got rid of it. I think the total costs were over $100k.
Petaluma has one that seems to work unless there is a lot of traffic.
I hate them in the UK. We felt like Steve Martin in the movie where he got trapped in one and couldn’t get out.
Of course driving on the other side of the road made them even worse for us. My wife could never figure them out, and she is an excellent driver.
Amen brother. For years on this site and in person when the America apologizers/haters run America down, our $ and hold up Europe and the Euro as positives. I responded by calling Europe, and the Euro as Eurotrash.
“No, you remember. We live in The United States of America. We also don’t drive on the wrong side of the road. We don’t use the metric system. We use farenheit, not celcius. We speak english, not some foreign language. We love God and our exceptional country and we’re not apologetic, or embarrassed about it!!!
Furthermore we have our own culture and traditions, mores and taboos. As long as we are good upstanding citizens we shouldn’t be irritated by our government of, for and by we the people to endure anymore of this obsessive, compulsive nonsense!!!
Great, now I’ve got that Yes song stuck in my head.
Or Seoul, Korea !
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