

Roundabouts have turned a corner - deusclovis
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21587244-roundabouts-have-turned-corner-circling-globe?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/circlingtheglobe

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jeffblake
Imagine you are one of the engineers behind traffic lights. That's something
to be proud of, you've built something that keeps people safer, can allow
emergency vehicles to pass through, are centrally controllable, it can do this
this and this, EVERYONE knows about them... "Hey I'm the guy that invented the
traffic light!"

BUT now look at the "primitive" roundabout. It wins. Something thats simpler,
won't fail, and actually keeps people safer.

This is the dilemma I always fight with myself when I build tech solutions to
problems: Does this really make it better? Just because I think its cool, or
even that I am proud of it, doesn't mean its good for people to use. For me it
always comes down to what is the best. I believe the best in anything is very
objective, and that can often lead to very existential questions...

I make software that replaces paper tickets. The battle is always there when
someone will say they just want to stick to paper tickets. Sometimes, its hard
to disagree with them.

but when a customer pays me money, I start to feel better for awhile. Then the
thought is not: 'is this the best solution to this problem'... but rather: 'is
this the best thing I am capable of'

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mbell
I grew up in New England where there are a fair number of 'roundabouts' (or
rotorys as we called them). They were part of my driving test to get my
license as a teenager.

My take on them is that they probably do make traffic flow faster, but I was
always a bit scared to enter them whilst driving as almost no one seemed to
understand the rules. i.e. If you're taking the first exit of the rotary, you
should be in the right hand lane, if your not, you should be in the left hand
lane. As a result there was a lot of awkward lane changing by people whilst at
high turn angles, which was messy, mostly folks in the right hand lane of the
rotary going multiple exits and ultimately cutting off someone in the left
hand rotary lane on the way to a single lane exit.

~~~
sigkill
It's interesting that you call a roundabout a rotary, they are two different
things actually -
[http://www.cityofbrooklyncenter.org/DocumentCenter/Home/View...](http://www.cityofbrooklyncenter.org/DocumentCenter/Home/View/331)

~~~
mbell
For what it's worth when I took my driving test in ~1999 they were called
rotaries but the dynamics and physical layout was more like roundabouts from
your pdf. i.e. If properly entered there was no 'weave' area, it's just that
there always seemed to be multiple cars in the rotary with no clue causing
weaving. Ironically I've been back to that area recently and it's been
physically changed and now looks much more like the rotary layout in your pdf.

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616c
Qatar made a lot of controversy here quite recently, as part of the crazy
World Cup efforts for the next decade or so. Part of those efforts are
removing all those roundabouts why? This article can say what it wants about
R/As, but the maintenance improvements are lost as the rest of the traffic
grinds to a halt and it severely impacts the local economy with crippling
traffic.

People do not respect the flow of traffic here, being the major issue. It is
hard to get people to use R/As properly if they do not understand intent.
Traffic frequently grinds to a halt as people cut-across, going from the most
inner lane out of the roundabout, or circle around in the outer lane and
continue to the next exit. It is so common it is the common cause of accidents
in the country's capital of Doha. Since the R/A is the nexus of the major
chokepoints, an accident causes more severe traffic. The massive traffic is
now compounded by the fact they must build intersections inside the center of
the R/A, and tear up the road to properly re-align. This never goes smoothly,
and the countries traffic has become worse over the last few months as people
continue to do this.

So, perhaps the cost is lower, but traffic dynamics are terrible in large
cities where the rules are misunderstood, which I assume to be all of them.

~~~
AlisdairO
Roundabouts are extremely common in the UK and work very well - but (a) they
are well understood, and (b) my experience is that drivers here are probably
more polite than average.

~~~
616c
And hence my point. Coming from the US, and many expats there are from the UK,
the amount of stern criticism leads me to believe driver education will
continue to be a problem, and they need intersections and more clearly cut
rules (read: radar detectors, with expensive fines, increasingly more common
in Qatar) and things will continue along the same course, just faster adoption
of cultural standards.

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joshuaheard
Roundabouts rule! I live in France and can drive from here to the store
without ever stopping. Single lane roundabouts are common, multi lane
roundabouts are more rare. The 5-lane roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe is a
white-knuckler.

They work simply: each car entering the roundabout must yield. I've never had
a problem.

I have had issues in the roundabouts in Seattle. Partly because they
inexplicably put a left turn lane in them. The other reason is most Americans
are not familiar with the concept and balk when using them.

~~~
ben0x539
One-lane roundabouts are fairly common where I live in Germany and I like them
just fine, but your ridiculous muti-lane roundabouts confuse the hell out of
me! Even on the two-lane roundabout between a place I stayed for a week and
the nearest supermarket, I probably pissed off a couple of locals every time.
:(

~~~
masklinn
> your ridiculous muti-lane roundabouts confuse the hell out of me!

It's really not difficult, at least when there are only two lanes:

* If you're going to travel for less than half the roundabout (going right), stay on the outer lane

* If you're going to travel for more than half the roundabout (going left), go on the inner lane

* If you're going straight, you can do either (it's mostly a question of traffic, if there's no traffic you can cut through the inner lane)

The second is more risky as not all drivers use their signals, let alone
correctly, but normally you give your output direction when entering the
roundabout (so use left signals if going left and right when going right),
then cut off the signals when on the roundabout and signal right when you're
between the exit you want to take and the previous one.

If you fear multi-lane roundabouts or are lost, just stay on the outer lane
and do not use your turn signals. People will get slightly annoyed when they
gave way and you were turning before them, but nothing more.

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beedogs
Roundabouts are _everywhere_ in Australia and I never understood why I almost
never saw them in America.

~~~
pandaman
People are not used to roundabouts in America. I lived in place where a whole
residential area (i.e. very light traffic, low speed limit, school zones) used
roundabouts instead of stop signs. Almost every other time I've seen another
car on a roundabout it's been making a left turn by driving clockwise (in
America people normally drive on the right side of the road so you need to
drive counterclockwise). On a more lively roundabout that was on my way to a
freeway I had to be very careful as a significant number of merging cars
believed they have a right of way. If there had been a way from my home that
did not have a roundabout I'd rather use that because roundabouts were really
scary.

~~~
mapt
I've regularly used three roundabouts in my life in the US for different daily
commutes, two of which were very busy: I've never seen anyone try to drive
clockwise. They do cause confusion for the drivers, who are unlikely to
regularly encounter them and are never sure who believes who has right of way,
but not clueless to that degree. Right of way on single-lane traffic circles
is something people can figure out through driving slow and common sense.

I am not a fan of 2-3 lane roundabout / traffic circles which try to use
signal-less operation, because right of way becomes intractable and lane
changes difficult.

~~~
pandaman
That's not really clueless. I also lived near an overpass with ramps (where
you can get on/off the upper street by a ramp, which is, naturally,
unidirectional) and since the upper street was not divided it was possible to
drive on a ramp in a wrong way. And I have seen couple cars doing just that.
From my understanding, quite a few drivers do not really know traffic rules
beyond "red means stop" and just follow other cars. If there are no other cars
to follow they quickly get confused by any unusual road structure.

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OWaz
In some of the skiing villages in Colorado the intersections were ripped out
and roundabouts were added. I heard it was to make the towns seem more
European. As a driver I realized it made traffic flow much, much faster. What
I do wonder is if roundabouts that service major roads have a lower accident
rate than an intersection with traffic lights.

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sandGorgon
These _absolutely_ do not work in Asia - they are pretty common in the Indian
subcontinent and SE asia.

However, fundamentally it is a self-regulated mechanism where you need to
follow rules like allow merging from left, etc. Traffic signals have more
simplistic rules and can be more strictly enforced. The problem happens in
heavy traffic when you are literally fighting for your exit - there is no way
that you can claim to have been following the rules.

In India, a lot of roundabouts are being converted to traffic signals to save
time and safety.

~~~
masklinn
> These absolutely do not work in Asia - they are pretty common in the Indian
> subcontinent and SE asia.

Considering traffic lights don't work either (unless there are a few cops
looking for coffee money under the light), that's not exactly surprising.

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d43594
Gloucestershire in the UK have a habit of putting traffic lights on
roundabouts which as you can imagine completely defeats the point of one. A
round about automatically prioritises traffic based on demand. This
combination of two contradictory solutions is the work of the devil.

~~~
barrkel
Roundabouts need traffic lights if any exit has a continuous stream of
traffic; it starves the entrance immediately before the exit. If there's much
traffic entering before a popular exit, it can easily get backed up. I've seen
several roundabouts get traffic lights, or get converted back into a traffic
light junction, because of this, as traffic patterns changed.

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cjrp
That's one of the things I've found frustrating about driving in America. In
England, approaching a roundabout with a good open view to your right you can
see when there's no approaching traffic and maintain 20-30mph. Whereas in
America, despite the fact I could see it was clear, I had to come to a
complete stop.

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mceoin
"American authorities say swapping crossroads for roundabouts cuts deaths by
90% and crashes by a third."

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ck2
Plus I bet it is near impossible to text-while-driving in a roundabout, well
at least not and stay alive.

Might make people actually pay attention to their driving if there were more
in the USA.

Do other countries have a similar text-while-driving problem?

~~~
masklinn
> Plus I bet it is near impossible to text-while-driving in a roundabout, well
> at least not and stay alive.

Depends on the size of the roundabout, on some of them you can more or less go
straight through (the bends can be smaller than a chicane).

> Do other countries have a similar text-while-driving problem?

Yes. A number of countries have laws against operation of a mobile phone while
driving (be it texting or calling).

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mmanfrin

      Nevada built America’s first in 1990
    

I grew up in Orinda, and for as long as I can remember there has been a
roundabout in theater square[1].

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=orinda&data=!1m4!1m3!...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=orinda&data=!1m4!1m3!1d375!2d-122.1822754!3d37.8791622!2m1!1e3!4m15!2m14!1m13!1s0x80857cbd5dc823ff%3A0x89dac03702126789!3m8!1m3!1d5884509!2d-119.306607!3d37.2691745!3m2!1i1439!2i695!4f13.1!4m2!3d37.8771476!4d-122.1796888&fid=7)

~~~
blackjack48
That appears to be a traffic circle. Entry to roundabouts is controlled
entirely by yield signs.

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btbuilder
I've often suspected that the extensive use of stop signs instead of yields or
traffic circles in the US on suburban or low traffic streets and roads is a
conspiracy run by the brake pad and oil industries.

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malandrew
The other day I actually got to see inside one of those big green boxes on the
intersection corners in SF that control the street lights. I was shocked at
how much equipment was needed to operate one of those. It's as if there has
been no progress in the industry with respect to minimization because it's not
a selling point, only price and functionality are.

~~~
josh2600
Yes. It's as if companies don't waste money on R&D when there's no
competition.

That's how most of industrial America (and the world) works. Competition
breeds innovation, or something like that.

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blue1
The article mentions "dutch roundabouts" without explanation. Here is a page
describing them:

[http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/a-modern-
amster...](http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/a-modern-amsterdam-
roundabout/)

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mehdim
France has half of the world roundabouts with close to 30 000 ones (for a
total of 36000 cities)

