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The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

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Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#31

Post by circular_logic »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #21

Swindon is rural England? It's the 10th biggest town in the UK, with a population that exceeds some cities. Pretty much the only reason it's not a city is the archaic rule that cities have to have a cathedral. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britai...

This is a common misconception that I stumbled upon a few months ago.

  -  The cathedral requirement was only to the 19th Century.

  -  Size does not matter. For example St Davids is a city with only 1,600 inhabitants

  -  A city in the UK is a place that has been granted city status by the monarch.

  -  You can loose city status for similar arbitrary reasons

  -  London is not even a fucking city in this system!
UK city definition is perhaps one of the dumbest concepts in the UK due to its disparity with the populations expectation of actual criteria.

Sources:

  -  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13841482

  -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#32

Post by timthorn »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #21

Swindon is rural England? It's the 10th biggest town in the UK, with a population that exceeds some cities. Pretty much the only reason it's not a city is the archaic rule that cities have to have a cathedral. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britai...

Swindon is a big town, but is arguably in a rural location.

However, cities do /not/ need a Cathedral - just a Royal Charter. Look at e.g. Cambridge.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#33

Post by tim333 »

eutectic wrote: post #25
mojuba wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…

Once you are used to them roundabouts are for the most part pleasant to use, and safer than intersections. It's especially nice not to have to turn across incoming traffic.

Yeah I'd put them as about the 2nd least taxing junction. Slip lanes are probably easiest, then regular roundabouts then stop lights then normal cross roads/intersections.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#34

Post by timthorn »

circular_logic wrote: post #31
ZenoArrow wrote: post #21

Swindon is rural England? It's the 10th biggest town in the UK, with a population that exceeds some cities. Pretty much the only reason it's not a city is the archaic rule that cities have to have a cathedral. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britai...

This is a common misconception that I stumbled upon a few months ago. - The cathedral requirement was only to the 19th Century. - Size does not matter. For example St Davids is a city with only 1,600 inhabitants - A city in the UK is a place that has been granted city status by the monarch. - You can loose city status for similar arbitrary reasons - London is not even a fucking city in this system! UK city definition…

> London is not even a city in this system!

Well, there is the City of London aka the Square Mile, as well as the City of Westminster.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#35

Post by ggrothendieck »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.

The video claims roundabouts reduce accidents but according to the experience here: http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/gettingAround/Roundabout-S... collisions involving injury or fatalities did decrease by 51% at intersections that were replaced by roundabouts; however, overall collisions at those intersections increased by 35%.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#36

Post by ErrantX »

huhtenberg wrote: post #9

"Only one fatal crash in five years." (mentioned in video) That's hardly a good fact to support the claim that roundabouts are safer that well-regulated conventional intersections... which they are actually, and more efficient in terms of the traffic flow. But the "1 fatality in 5 years" is an useless data point that proves absolutely nothing.

It seems such a meaningless metric; of the three roundabouts around my town (one of which is very large, has no lanes and is surprisingly fast) there has been no fatal accidents as long as I recall (~8 years).

There has, however, been plenty of prangs.

My family use to live near Swindon - that roundabout is terrible for accidents when people get in the wrong lane and cut across. It's just that they tend to be slighter bumps due to the low speed.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#37

Post by masklinn »

radiorental wrote: post #17
masklinn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Plough is much simpler to handle imo, because you're only directly dealing with one roundabout at a time, the "meta-roundabout" is more incidental rather than the mess of Swindon.

Not quite strictly true. You can traverse the inner roundabout without having go full circle around each of the satellites.

True but these functionally behave like "roundabout bypasses": if you want to take a right at the roundabout, for the biggest and most engorged roundabouts around here it's common to have a lane letting you turn without entering the roundabout.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#38

Post by tim333 »

The history is kinda interesting

>Mini-roundabouts were developed by the Road Research Laboratory in the early 1970s as an experiment into whether the success of the priority-to-the-right rule at larger roundabout junctions could be applied to locations where there wasn't enough space to install a full-size roundabout. By summer 1971, 33 were in use across Britain.

>[Frank] Blackmore pursued this discovery, noting that the design was also superior to signalised junctions, following a Peterborough experiment where an extra 1,000 vehicles could be handled every hour by a new small roundabout at a previously signalised T-junction. He started to wonder if several small roundabouts could be linked to improve more complex junctions.

>...Blackmore didn't give up, [...] and in 1972 gave Britain a new design of Ring Junction. It was supposed to be in Birmingham, but the Council there was unable to fund the scheme, and so the RRL was invited to try its new design at a congested roundabout near Swindon town centre. For the first time, traffic could flow both ways right around the central island, meaning that if one side was congested, the other side could take up the slack. After a few days of Police control, in which time RRL researchers logged events from a crane-mounted camera, the experiment was branded a success.

>[It] is one of the few places where the jams have never really returned despite forty years of traffic growth.

>...They also have an excellent safety record, probably because all traffic is moving too slowly to do any real damage in the event of a collision.

from http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/the-magic-roundabout/

see also an obituary tribute http://www.mini-roundabout.com/tribute.htm

Quite a colourful history for a roundabout guy - Born and brought up an expat in Algeria, studied engineering in Switzerland, RAF pilot in WW2 getting an Air Force Cross, became an Air Attaché in Beirut where duties included bugging the Russians next door with holes drilled through the wall. Then roundabouts.

Re: The strange magic of Swindon’s seven-in-one roundabout

#40

Post by joshvm »

mojuba wrote: post #20
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.

Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…

I grew up in Swindon and learned to drive there, still go back fairly often (by car). The Magic Roundabout is fine, even at rush hour. I don't think I've ever needed to do a full revolution of it, often I just need to turn right (which you can do a lot faster than on most junctions). That's the beauty of the system - there's an efficient route to all the exits while also letting traffic cross you.

Compared to single roundabouts of a similar size, it's really not that bad. You just treat every little mini-roundabout separately and give way to the right.

It's much less confusing than large roundabouts where you need to anticipate lane markings (which are impossible to see in traffic) or you end up going round for another try.

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