Posted on 07/01/2011 9:59:00 AM PDT by the scotsman
'A roundabout revolution is slowly sweeping the US. The land of the car, where the stop sign and traffic light have ruled for decades, has started to embrace the free-flowing British circular.
A few moments after entering Carmel, it's clear why the city has been described as the Milton Keynes of the US.
As the sat-nav loudly and regularly points out, there's often a roundabout up ahead.
But unlike in the English town famous for them, driving into this pretty city on the outskirts of Indianapolis also involves passing several more under construction.
The city is at the forefront of a dizzying expansion, across several American states, of the circular traffic intersection redesigned in 1960s Britain and then exported globally. About 3,000 have been built in the US in the last 20 years.'
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
The county courthouse sits on a lawn in the middle, old-timers (of which I'm now one ;-) sit on the benches on each side of the courthouse to critique the world, and typical small town businesses line the actual square which comprises the circumference.
Incoming traffic yields .. on summer nights in days of yore while cruising (north) main, a couple laps of the square would be where the decision was often made for jaunts further afield to points west/south/east for drive-ins/bowling/submarine races and other 'nature' studies/etc, etc.
< /time warp >
I also lived in Nottingham for several months with relatives and bought a 1961 Mini Cooper. I would floor that thing thru roundabouts right behind other minis....
Words of gold right there ...words of gold. In the countries that I have traveled to and lived in, most countries that do NOT have roundabouts are trying to introduce them, and most that DO have them are trying to get rid of the darn bl@@dy things. What you said is very true ....they require a certain amount of discipline. Take away that discipline and roundabouts are the worst impediment to flowing traffic this side of a Redwood tree laying across the road. You just need 2-3 drivers to think they have the right of way (and traffic rules do not necessarily apply to them), and it is gridlock like you cannot believe.
Roundabouts are a bit like minefields ...they have a purpose, but muck about and they will go psycho on you.
However I find it so interesting how the countries that do not have them are trying to get them, while those that do claim the Devil himself came up with the idea!
Rotary or circles are not the same as roundabouts. The traffic controls for roundabouts favores those in the roundabout whereas the older circles(rotaries) really did not have much control at all.
Traffic flows thru them much better with less serious accidents.
BS... I was on a motorcycle, 3000 miles behind me already, went thru the first one I had seen here in the US, (in trendy Vail, no less,) and as I am fairly experienced in “paying attention” while driving, I found myself confused as to where the hell I was supposed to go, and seemed the other drivers did as well... as far as I am concerned, they are ridiculous here in the states.
Never been to Rome? ;-)
But let me guess, you got where you needed to go and no one got hurt.
And the more you use them, the better you get at them.
We can be so ridiculously change resistant (not you personally) that we invent objections to worthwhile changes. A red light at a rural crossroad is simply absurd.
This is a roundabout.
They have some small ones around where I live. I still call them "circles" because of my childhood memories even though they are not that, strictly speaking. I still get a little nervous trying to enter one when there is heavy traffic already in the roundabout. When traffic is light they are no problem, just breeze in and out again. This looks like a pretty busy one:
Is it a circle, rotary, or roundabout? I can't tell.
Good photo of a well done roundabout...Makes a lot of sense if someone is paying attention...
Question: What happens when a pedestrian wants to cross? I don’t see traffic lights in your picture. If you stop traffic at ONE crossing, then traffic backs up all around
Our fair city was designed by a professional city planner with engineers to study traffic and plan for the flow back in 1917. They laid out the city with very forward looking room for growth installed traffic Circles as in Dupont Circle in DC. By the late 50’s and the early 70’s traffic had increased to the point that the circles could not handle the flow and there was not adequate space to enlarge them to handle multiple lanes. Only one of the original circles remains......the Church Circle.
Then in about 2005 planners studying various intersections inserted circles into the computers generating traffic flow solutions. They worked. We now have several new circles and the traffic headaches are no more at those intersections.
To remove the bad taste, call them circles and dismiss the roundabout . They are as American as Apple Pie and Dupont Circle
That one illustrates a big problem with them and that’s when most of the traffic is coming from one road and/or going to another road - not distributed fairly evenly.
Roundabouts really help to reduce the severity of the accidents. But with anything involving humans who knows what will happen.
The problem is most people don't adhere to #1 - "Cars entering a roundabout must yield to those already in the circle". Everything else breaks down after that...
I've been through a few in sleepy little towns in western PA, and they work well when there is little traffic. But then you hit one in NJ (where they are eliminating them) with lots of traffic and where the locals have no mercy...
That's another big problem with them - since they are fairly rare in the US, most people (including me) don't know how to navigate them.
The pedestrians cross in the approach and exit roadways so for the most part the slowdown from them is only momentary. Traffic will the clear out the delay fairly quickly.
Yep, not much you can do when the traffic is that heavy. Some of the worst rotaries (not roundabouts) in NJ they had to put traffic signals in to keep things from getting too wild and woolly. Basically made them into circular intersections. In other places they gave up the ghost and went with jug handles. Good for eliminating left turns across multiple lanes of oncoming traffic, but some of the feeders into those jug handles would get pretty jammed up, sometimes backing up onto the main road. Same deal, you get choked with traffic, not much of anything is going to help.
I spent decades navigating NJ circles. They were on major highway intersections.
The fatal flaw in their design was that they were more than ONE lane wide. Two lanes of traffice in a crowded intersection with many oppurtunities in choosing a direction of traffic is a recipe for disaster.
NJ circles became Indy qualifying runs, with desperate people imitating kamikaze pilots in order to exit the circle when they needed to, usually cutting off multiple lanes of traffic. White knuckle time.
Simple is best. Not all inteersections benefit from a circle, but many can ifthe following principles are followed:
Travel in a circle should be one lane only.
Traffic enteringing INTO the circle always yields.
Traffic IN the circle always has the right of way.
Pedestrians have the right of way here in DE.
In my town, Georgetown, DE we have a famous circle in the center of town. It has worked well since horse and buggy days.
Traffic moves through the circle until you get a driver from NJ, MD, or PA that does not know how to read a yield sign.
Jughandles are not efficient. Usually you have to go right in order to go left. That means to make a left hand turn, the same car goes throught the same intersection two times.
There are no jughandles in southern DE—thank God!
There are left turn lanes, and you can even make u-turns at red lights.
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