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We're excited about our new roundabout

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Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#241

Post by floatrock »

tumidpandora wrote: post #223

Roundabouts are a nuisance, while they offer some merits, the sheer lack of education around how to navigate one makes for a very unpleasant experience in most cases.

"We don't have experience with a new better system so we must never adopt it."

And so the lack of experience continues on forever.

Come on, man, people will figure it out.

There will always be the dashcam vid of the yokel who tries to make a left into one despite the obvious signage and directional nudges, but dashcam youtube has shown us there's always people out there who have no common sense and should not have a license. Just pop some popcorn and continue scrolling.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#242

Post by consp »

knallfrosch wrote: post #221

This is Germany's biggest roundabout, "B17 Kreisverkehr" Features two lanes and five exits, as well as a pass-through bridge for a highway. When you drive on the highway, you don't even see it. https://i.prcdn.co/img?regionKey=W3NBJc2RmiFQ3sgVAHxBDg%3D%3...

Plenty of those around here (not all 5 way but you get the jist):

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?#map=17/50.841903/6.016...

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?#map=17/51.404972/5.502...

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?#map=17/51.982028/5.978...

And I raise you the double highway fly over: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/52.056112/5.122311

My my local pet peeve of horrible roundabouts, you got cycling paths, a tram line, a bus line with different exit and cars. (the hexagonal cycling path with internal car circle causes the cars to not see a lot of the cycling paths making accidents frequent): https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/51.996997/4.354979

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#243

Post by zamadatix »

ojhughes wrote: post #160

I thought Americans called them "turning circles"

Depends where and who you're talking to. Overall though, I'd say it's probably most often roundabout, traffic circle, and rotary (in that order) and I haven't heard much else. And yes, they are different things to traffic nerds, but I mean places (particularly in the NE like Massachusetts) just call them all rotaries regardless what the traffic department teaches https://www.mass.gov/info-details/what-are-roundabouts.

Of course this could just be banter, in which case: absolutely not, we tout our motors through circular-wirculators just like anybody else!

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#244

Post by zamadatix »

rootusrootus wrote: post #26
code_runner wrote: post #19

US here. There seems to be an obsession at the moment with adding roundabouts in my area. They don’t always fit where they are put. Some of them have a stop sign in the roundabout? When asked why, the answer is reducing “points of conflict”, which is a static variable. There aren’t actually studies being done before or after to see if makes the flow of traffic better. They are also adding them in walkable areas with…

> Some of them have a stop sign in the roundabout? Traffic gets much heavier and we'll need stop signs at our roundabout near my house. During rush hour it has predominantly one flow of traffic and nobody slows down below 30-35 mph so getting into the roundabout can be difficult. A stop sign would defeat some of the point of a roundabout but it may become necessary to enforce safety.

How big are the roundabouts? I've read one of the problems that can be had is smaller ones, like in this picture, allow drivers to go through at high speed unimpeded. The "ideal" design seems to be to wiggle the road the opposite direction of the turning motion then force going around a decent sized center. In this way going around a roundabout quickly isn't impossible... but going 35 mph would make most feel quite uneasy. The downside is it greatly amplifies one of the biggest roundabout downsides: the amount of space needed.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#246

Post by tehwebguy »

maltalex wrote: post #88
woleium wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK they are called mini roundabouts, and are sometimes just painted on: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mini-roundabout.jp...

Painted roundabouts will be invisible when it snows.

No it is the exact opposite! There will be a snow island, snow will improve the visibility of the roundabout!

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#247

Post by zamadatix »

Given the amount of space if I were driving through it I'd wish they had just made it a little larger so it could be a normal "full circle" roundabout. Sometimes the biggest problems with roundabouts is the number of variations. "You can use this lane to go that way here but a mile up if you want to go that way you want to make sure you're in the other lane". Not to mention it seems somewhat easy to speed through without even bothering to slow down for certain entrance/exit pairs.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#248

Post by realityking »

Symbiote wrote: post #224
lupusreal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four way stops are common in lightly trafficked situations where the locals can't justify spending the money on anything but a few stop signs. For instance, the main street through a small town ( Four way stops are also common when two country roads of relatively equal weight intersect. There are so many roads like that, so many intersections, that the local government can't possibly afford lights or circles on all o…

I'm not sure why the four way stop "makes the most sense". In Europe one road (perhaps arbitrarily) would be declared the main road, and the other road gets yield signs, or even just yield road markings (triangles).

Or, in the absence of any signage, it'd just be "right before left". Relatively common in the outskirts of cities where there isn't one road that has significantly more traffic than the other one.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#249

Post by btbuildem »

necrobrit wrote: post #149
bane wrote: post #108

This 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…

90% of stop signs in the US/Canada should actually be yield signs. Stop signs are reserved for "dangerous" intersections, ie spots where a driver can't safely see or make a decision without first stopping.

Throwing a red octagon at every single intersection of two roads is lazy and absurd. It encourages people to break the rules (just run the stop sign) and cause accidents (zone out, stop and go without actually looking).

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#250

Post by btbuildem »

dsego wrote: post #233
dmurray wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one four-way stop I pass regularly in Ireland [0]. I suspect there isn't enough room for a roundabout, and we also don't tend to construct roundabouts on hills (I'm not sure why they're any worse than other junctions there). There's a steep gradient going uphill from South to North. Normally it would be a two way stop, and I sometimes wonder why that wasn't chosen here. Likely because visibility is bad (trees…

A four-way stop would be confusing for me, those don't exist in my country as far as I'm aware. I was also thought that a stop or yield sign means I'm on the side road and the other road implicitly has priority.

The concept of priority and side road was too complex for North Americans. Yield signs virtually don't exist here.
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