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We're excited about our new roundabout
141–150 of 316 posts
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#142Roundabouts get a lot of praise whenever they're mentioned, and from a traffic flow perspective that's understandable - if by traffic you mean motorised traffic. For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion. > Making a roundabout for everyone ctrl-f "walk", "cycl", pedes". Nothing.
Citation needed. As a cyclist I prefer roundabouts: they're faster than lights and don't rob my momentum, and they're safer than uncontrolled intersections/4-way stops because all the cars are coming from the same direction.
Caveat: this is for simple, single-lane roundabouts. Multi-lane roundabouts are gnarly for cars and worse for cyclists.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#143UK reader here (we are pretty much 'all in' on roundabouts) I'm reading this and wondering how they'd cope with the 'Magic Roundabout': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Hemel_Hempst...
Even UK drivers struggle a bit with this one!
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
They absolutely are. Even if they don't prevent all collisions, they turn T-bones into glancing hits and so save a lot of lives. The worst roundabout beats the best 4-way stop any day of the week. Sometimes there really are easy answers.
You can actually screw them up: by our house (in California) they replaced a 4-way stop with a roundabout with no signaling on 2 of the ways, and a stop on the other 2. An absolute disaster, as the 2 ways without the stop assumed they had the right of way over people already in the roundabout. After the neighbourhood complained, it's now a roundabout with 4 stops (not ideal, but not dangerous either).
The right solution would've been to remove all the stops. They defeat almost the whole purpose of the roundabout.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#145Roundabouts get a lot of praise whenever they're mentioned, and from a traffic flow perspective that's understandable - if by traffic you mean motorised traffic. For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion. > Making a roundabout for everyone ctrl-f "walk", "cycl", pedes". Nothing.
I do agree that the roundabout pictured in the article does not seem to include any considerations towards non car traffic, but at least in Germany the vast majority of roundabouts have seperate bicycle lanes and zebra crossings on all entrances, meaning foot and bicycle traffic has right of way. As a pedestrian I vastly prefer these to intersections in nearly every situation.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#146Roundabouts get a lot of praise whenever they're mentioned, and from a traffic flow perspective that's understandable - if by traffic you mean motorised traffic. For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion. > Making a roundabout for everyone ctrl-f "walk", "cycl", pedes". Nothing.
I agree they're a pain for pedestrians (cars are faster, drivers too busy looking at every other car entering the intersection to look at pedestrians) the Dutch do car and bike roundabout well (embedding the car one in a bike one)
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#147No discussion about roundabouts can be complete without a mention of the (mostly) Dutch "turbo roundabout", where the lane you take going into a multi-lane roundabout depends on where you want to exit, and you can't / are not allowed to switch lanes while on it:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:roundabout%3Dturbo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundabouts
https://www.arcadis.com/en-us/knowledge-hub/blog/united-stat...
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#148I live in the US now, but originally from Ireland. My least favourite part of US road infrastructure is the 4 way stop. They are just not good compared to a roundabout. Half the time the only way you can tell it’s an all way stop is by looking for the back of the stop signs on the perpendicular road. With a roundabout, you only have to look in one direction, and if it’s clear, you don’t even have to stop.
I've lived with both roundabouts and 4-way stops, I think they both have their places (and also if you haven't lived with them both are hard to pick up on) 4-way stops are great for slowing traffic in neighbourhoods (you have to stop at every block), roundabouts better on faster mid level roads
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#149This is oddly timely. I'm travelling in Europe at the moment and have been covering a lot of area with a lot of roundabouts where they would be signaled or signed intersections in the US. They definitely make traffic flow smoothly and I've noticed a few areas where they are used to eliminate dangerous left turns at places like parking lots, you leave turning right, hit the next roundabout to "uturn" then head back th…
The preference for 4 way stops in a country that otherwise prioritises traffic flow so much is really jarring. Traffic lights too to some extent.
About 5 years ago my wife an I were doing a California road trip. At one point on a relatively rural road -- I think it might have been Dry Creek road heading into Napa but cannae mind exactly -- we got stuck in traffic for around 45 minutes. We thought there must have been some huge accident or roadworks closing the road. But got the the end and nope... 4 way stop essentially letting one. car. through. at. a. time.
I distinctly remember exclaiming "why the f wasn't that a roundabout" after clearing. Funny that it is now one of my strongest memories of that trip haha.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#150Roundabouts get a lot of praise whenever they're mentioned, and from a traffic flow perspective that's understandable - if by traffic you mean motorised traffic. For pedestrians and cyclists they are worse than the alternative (lights - or even a simple intersection) in my opinion. > Making a roundabout for everyone ctrl-f "walk", "cycl", pedes". Nothing.
I do agree that the roundabout pictured in the article does not seem to include any considerations towards non car traffic, but at least in Germany the vast majority of roundabouts have seperate bicycle lanes and zebra crossings on all entrances, meaning foot and bicycle traffic has right of way. As a pedestrian I vastly prefer these to intersections in nearly every situation.
Definitely preferable to intersections. A roundabout means there is only one place to look for oncoming cars, rather than potentially 4.
Although ideally the crossing on a roundabout should be set back so far they arguably aren't even on the roundabout... so space is an issue.