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We're excited about our new roundabout

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Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#261

Post by samcat116 »

Taniwha wrote: post #146
tmnvix wrote: post #140

Roundabouts 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)

> cars are faster One of the main advantages of roundabouts vs 4-way intersections is they force drivers to slow down, so this doesn't make any sense.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#262

Post by lupusreal »

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).

If one is obviously a main road then it's a two way. If neither is, then it's a four way. If the intersection is lightly trafficked then there's not any reason not to make it a four way because it won't cause meaningful delays anyway. When a county has several hundred country road intersections that get a few dozen cars or less a day through them, it doesn't make sense to even spend time studying each one. Just throw up some stop signs and consider the matter resolved.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#263

Post by timdiggerm »

zamadatix wrote: post #247

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 wit…

Did you read the blog post?

>The new roundabout needed to be built in the same space as the old intersection. To the east is a steep hill. To the southwest there are protected wetlands. There wasn’t space or budget to mitigate the potential impact in either direction.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#264

Post by lupusreal »

realityking wrote: post #248
Symbiote wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right before left is how four-way stops work. Putting the signs up doesn't cost much, so why skip them?

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#266

Post by asib »

Etheryte wrote: post #202
asib wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally just how you're supposed to go round any roundabout. Right lane if you're going straight ahead or right (to any extent), left lane otherwise. Anything else _will_ cause crashes, because vehicles will necessarily have to cut across each other to exit the roundabout. The "turbo roundabout" might make this explicit, but it's not different.

This is hugely oversimplified and doesn't really correspond to real life. Not all roundabouts are symmetric and not all have four entry-exit pairs. Many roundabouts have two lanes on some entries, but a single lane on others, similarly for exits. In scenarios like this you will inevitably have to switch lanes in some scenarios. It isn't really as big of a problem as you make it sound though, since roundabouts natural…

> Not all roundabouts are symmetric and not all have four entry-exit pairs.

I didn't say or imply this. The rule works for non-symmetrical roundabouts without issue. To phrase it differently:

If your exit is to the right of a hypothetical line extending across the roundabout in your direction of travel upon entry into the roundabout, go in the right lane. Otherwise, left lane.

> In scenarios like this you will inevitably have to switch lanes in some scenarios.

No roundabout I've ever driven through in the UK has required lane switching, unless I was in the wrong lane to begin with.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#267

Post by pclmulqdq »

bfirsh wrote: post #253
davidgay wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I can confirm these are dangerous. There are several of these in Berkeley and I got knocked off my bicycle on one of them for exactly the reason you describe. I am from the UK and it makes me wonder why road design in the US is so bad. Just one minute of thinking about this as a lay person would reveal the problem with the design. Is there some structural reason in the US that would cause it? Perhaps some lack of sta…

My personal hypothesis on this is that the worst 5% of Americans is likely both dumber and more sociopathic than Europeans, and the behavior of the worst drivers is what creates a lot of traffic and road accidents. If that is the case, you will not have the same kind of design that works in a high-trust, more cohesive society.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#268

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

artursapek wrote: post #256
btbuildem wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 look…

Funny, I live in the US and I treat about 90% of stop signs as yield signs. My ex-wife would complain about it to me all the time as if I’m doing something wrong, but I never stopped lol

I presume you mean a rolling stop and not a yield?

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#269

Post by ToucanLoucan »

mway wrote: post #117
thepaulmcbride wrote: post #35

I 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.

Unfortunately, most drivers I've observed in the US seem utterly confounded by roundabouts, particularly the yielding part. The roundabouts I've experienced - there are several where I live - are mostly single-lane, and are still very nerve wracking to drive around because other drivers behave very unpredictably. Then again, I also see folks struggling with (or intentionally ignoring) queuing for 4+ way stops. That s…

Truthfully I'd say about 60% of drivers in the States have no business behind the wheel of anything, much less the mammoth pedestrian-devouring SUVs and trucks we're such fans of. It is shocking how BAD it is getting.

I think COVID really kicked the enshittification of drivers here into a new realm. That spat where driving tests were suspended in so many places and driving school wasn't workable has let a couple years worth of drivers onto the road who had almost no practical instruction, and it fucking shows. And it's not like most people were good before that. For the vast majority, driving is a chore and you can tell that by the absolutely bare-minimum efforts put into it.

Re: We're excited about our new roundabout

#270

Post by artursapek »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #268
artursapek wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I live in the US and I treat about 90% of stop signs as yield signs. My ex-wife would complain about it to me all the time as if I’m doing something wrong, but I never stopped lol

I presume you mean a rolling stop and not a yield?

Yeah, slow down to 3-5 mph and make sure there’s nobody coming, then keep going.
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