Traffic Roundabouts: Do They Work In Your City? (university, dangerous)

[PITTSTON2SARASOTA]

Originally Posted by dem3456

I've seen people at the rotary in Foxboro going the wrong way a few times too. I have also seen people who don't know what they are doing stop at each point where a road intersects the rotary.

Imagine the "circus", when your cities population nearly doubles with seasonal tourists, and trying to navigate a six lane, city intersection, now changed to a roundabout? With heavy bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

[dem3456]

Originally Posted by PITTSTON2SARASOTA

Imagine the "circus", when your cities population nearly doubles with seasonal tourists, and trying to navigate a six lane, city intersection, now changed to a roundabout? With heavy bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

I really can't even begin to imagine. It must be crazy.

[Innotech]

Originally Posted by PeaceChild

Are they like the ones in Michigan?

Michigan left - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

actually, the WEstbank in Louisiana has very similar setups. I was kind of confused driving there because you cant turn left. you have to drive up past the intersection to designated Uturn lane and then turn around and turn right onto the intersection. It was a pain in the ass for me.

[EnjoyTheSilence]

I remember several of these in Massachusetts, but they call them Rotaries. They seemed to work pretty well all in all, just like they do in Europe. If used correctly, they are far more effective than intersections with traffic lights as they help the flow of traffic.

[bradly]

The one in Downtown Albuquerque works like a charm. Even though it throws everyone off course and sorta is the knock off of Route 66.

[rnc2mbfl]

In Raleigh they started showing up in big box suburban shopping center parking lots. Next, they started showing up in some large scale housing developments. Now, there's a urban renewal project near DT and NC State Univ. where 2 roundabouts are part of a massive streetscape plan. I look forward to their completion and the new traffic pattern. If for nothing else, I am just curious how it's going to work.
http://www.gogoraleigh.com/wp-conten...009/05/hst.jpg
http://www.hillsboroughstreet.org/pr...date_18x89.pdf

[tmac9wr]

I'm glad the other people from MA have been calling these "Roundabouts" by their real name: Rotary! There's tons of them around me. I live in a small town called Scituate, about 25 miles to the Southeast of Boston. We just got a new rotary which has 6 different roads coming into it. The other day I was coming home with a buddy and some old lady took a left onto the rotary. Scariest thing I've ever seen. If I don't want to take the highway into the city, I take Route 3A which has two other rotaries in Hingham and Quincy.

The Quincy rotary is insane. The outlet to the bottom is the entrance to the Commuter Boat, so you need to go around 3/4 of the rotary, but people are entering from 3A (from the map's perspective it's the left entrance) and they are going 50+ and they will not stop for you no matter what...at the same time you're already in the rotary and you're not allowed to stop either. Let's just say there have been some close calls there.

I also had a great episode with my ex-girlfriend in a rotary on the North Shore (Revere I think). She was from NC and wasn't used to the Boston driving methods, so when we turned a 2 lane rotary into a 3 lane rotary with dozens of other cars, she flipped her shat and started screaming and hitting me while I was driving. Fun times.

My 4 years of college in South Carolina had me going insane when I drove.

[leighland]

Has anyone mentioned the Roundabouts/Rotaries in DC? There is a bunch of them, all in very high traffic areas, very narrow roads, with tons of pedestrians milling about. So far I've done a couple (In a minivan no less) but it was a Sunday. Wonder how I would navigate M-F...

[Innotech]

Also, there are two kinds of traffic roundabout. The first is the older style, larger traffic circle. This seems more like what cities like Boston or DC have. They are characterized by huge diameters, high speed entry/exit, and a lack of yield signs. There is a town in Louisiana called alexandria with a traffic circle as well and I really hate it. The more modern and safer variant is called a roundabout, and has much smaller diameters, a small central median, fewer lanes or a single one, and yield signs which force traffic to drive slowly around it. The benefit of this sort of roundabout over an intersection with traffic lights is that it has only 8 points of collision, as opposed to the 32 points of danger on a conventional intersection. There are a couple of these scattered throughout my town and I use them frequently. The main problem seems to be that drivers here do not understand how to use a roundabout, though I have yet to see an accident at one, which is the great thing about them. In Europe, the roundabout is more complicated, with specific rules for multi lane usage and the drivers there know how to use them, which makes it much safer.

[jluke65780]

We have one in Houston, and we also had one in Waco. It's confusing when you first use them but you get use to them. The one in Waco has no lights or stop signs