I love them. I lived in England for 4.5 years and got very acquainted with them.
There’s been on roundabout in nearby Belleville, Illinois for over 50 years. At one time it was rather unique and it was fun to watch drivers who had very been in one before.
Now they are popping up all over the place and it seems to be going well.
Hmm… The Americans are catching on to our language…
Revert to plan B chaps, start calling them circus gyratories again!
Yup, that apparently was the original name; one in Bristol rejoices in the rather marvellous name of Temple Circus Gyratory to this day. It’s one of many that has somewhat ruined the point by adding traffic lights though, sadly.
Anyway, I generally quite like roundabouts, until they reach the level of Milton Keynes, which is apparently entirely comprised of the things.
What ho old bean… y’all don’t think we’re tryin’ to take over the English language do you?
I suppose I’d have to see it to get a visual idea of what it looks like. My experience with rotaries is just what I wrote above. When they’re busy, it’s just a matter of waiting for an exiting car to create a gap, and it only takes one to do so.
what, the language which uses “programme,” “aubergine,” “courgette,” and a bunch of useless "u"s which don’t belong?
Many people who dislike roundabouts had a bad experience with a traffic circle, where you must yield to traffic entering the circle. The new ones are designed so that traffic entering must yield to traffic in the circle. This keeps the traffic in the circle moving, and prevents the rear-enders that happened in traffic circles because drivers could not see ahead of the car in front of them to prepare for the car in front of them suddenly braking.
And it is collisions that have been bringing about many of these roundabouts, because traffic does not cross at 90 degrees, but at lower angles, and at slower speeds. You cannot ‘run a roundabout’ the way you can run a stoplight. Going faster is less likely to get you through faster, so collisions are much less violent.
When left turn lane signals started to appear where I lived, it took a while for people to see them. One of the reasons that I like a roundabout is that I am not required to stop. At a stoplight, I must come to a complete stop, and wait until traffic is clear before I proceed. This does not mean that I must wait for the light to turn green, it just means that I have to stop before I proceed. A stoplight is an automatic stop sign. If you don’t stop, you are running the light. At a roundabout, there is no light, just the natural breaks in traffic. But you must respond quickly, and assertively, which is where many drivers have problems.
where’d the frick my N go?
Who said I stop at street lights? :p;)
YIKES! Never been in one of those!
Me no likey!
http://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,1607,7-151-9615_53039—,00.html The second graphic is more our small town example. There is one in Ann Arbor on the way to the VA hospital…those left turns are a b*tch. The second graphic is much like the one in Ann Arbor, that I remember
Guess you have to get used to them but not sure the husband will…he no likey change!
Yes, this thread has a Magic Roundabout score of 10, which is not bad by historical roundabout thread standards.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=1992795&postcount=19
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2214949&postcount=7
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4526327&postcount=10
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4983842&postcount=39
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6262550&postcount=25
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8902532&postcount=5
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8926076&postcount=25
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10206016&postcount=10
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10548823&postcount=4
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12733658&postcount=41
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13590702&postcount=11
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16832396&postcount=3
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18544725&postcount=114
The only one I can think of in the New Orleans area is the Causeway Blvd and Airline Dr. I love it. And Lee Circle.
Not sure about that. There was a Guardian story a couple of weeks ago about it, but it was basically a few city-centre roundabouts, out of the tens of thousands of roundabouts in the UK, which was given the untrue but more attention-grabbing headline “the UK is quietly replacing roundabouts with traffic lights”. It has always been the case that roundabouts have been replaced with light-controlled intersections when traffic flows change and make them less than optimal.
They’ve just installed some in our area. Yeah, they speed things up slightly but that’s because they are very low traffic volume. And they will always be scary to go thru. (The local idiots don’t handle even stop signs well.)
At modest to high volume they are terrible. The one on Hilton Head needs to be replaced by a traffic light.
They are very good for modest levels of traffic coming in multiple directions. They do have the problem mentioned that if there’s a steady stream of cars coming from your left and no one coming from the opposite side, there might never be a break in traffic for you. They also have one other major problem: pedestrians. There is never a safe time for pedestrians to cross.
I really like them though. What I like most about them is that they efficiently solve the problem of people coming to a 4-way stop at the same time. If that happens in a roundabout, they just all go and miss each other as they go through.
I could actually see the use of a metering light, like some large cities have for freeway on-ramps, if one leg is always dominating the flow on the rotary, like the situation Peremensoe was describing. You wouldn’t need a light on every entrance, just one on the dominating leg to break the flow periodically and give other roads a chance to enter the roundabout.
Were it up to me, I would try to set it up so that they never actually are given the right-of-way to enter the circle; they would alternate between a red light and the usual rule of yielding to the left.
As far as pedestrians, the same rule as any regular crosswalk applies; they always have the right-of-way. Here in Maine, I have to say most drivers are actually pretty courteous to pedestrians, and will stop to let them cross at crosswalks, and oftentimes even where there is no crosswalk. I’ve walked across the crosswalks at this multiple-lane rotary in Augusta just to test it out, and whether I was crossing at an exit or an entrance, people would stop in both lanes to let me cross. I never had to wait long. On the flip side, I’ve been a driver and stopped for people crossing, both when entering and exiting that same rotary. I watch my rearview mirrors like a hawk anytime I have to stop within the circle for a pedestrian, but so far, I have never come close to getting hit. So at least here in Maine, rotaries and pedestrian traffic are not incompatible.
I saw a roundabout that had me wondering, here.
The southeast and northwest feeder roads have 2 lanes entering and 2 lanes exiting. According to the arrows on the road, if you enter from the southeast and hit the northwest side, both lanes in the roundabout have the option of either exiting, or continuing on the roundabout. The issue is if the outside lane decides to continue around, and the inside lane decides to exit (both allowed by the arrows) you will have a collision. Does this make sense or am I missing something? I think the arrows are incorrect.
those arrows don’t show on a street view. that might have been something added by Google earth.
Street view and Google Earth are not taken at the same time. I’ve seen the arrows in real life, so they’re there as shown.
ah. yeah, then they’re kind of dumb. I presume they at least have the typical signs on the approach to the roundabout telling you which lane you should be in to exit where?
Nope. Just the arrows directing you to run into each other. I was going to inform whomever one informs in a situation like this, but I kinda want to verify I’m not misreading the arrows. This is a city road, but in a very low traffic industrial park.
The other weird thing is if you enter the roundabout from the northwest, you can exit to the southwest just like a normal roundabout, but they built a separate bypass road that does the exact same thing. Very odd.
I LOVE roundabouts. They replaced many lights here with roundabouts and it is so much faster than waiting at some stupid light. I do think some drivers need to go to remedial education to learn how to use them, but that’s par for the course everywhere.