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The city I grew up in had no roundabouts back then. Today it does have some, some were even made and removed again since. People there hate roundabouts.
The city I live nearby now has so many roundabouts that I can drive for over an hour without seeing a traffic light. It always had those, people are used to using them.
Guess what works better and barely has any traffic issues at all.
As a bicyclist I hate them, at least the smaller ones. Because they slow me down, can't take them with 40 to 50 kph, need to slow down to 30. But that was the intent, yes?
However, crossings with traffic lights I can take at any speed I'm able to, when they are green for me, and I don't need to turn. Or if I can oversee them from afar, and they are empty, and I can give a shit about 'lights'.
Some roundabouts here have bike pass troughs on the side (obviously only works if there is no turn to that side) for speedy drivers like you.
Other than that it's obviously by design. There is no reason to speed at constant 50kph in a city. Nether for a car, motorbike or e-bike.
The think I don’t like about not being able to “speed” at 50kph(!) through a city is that, at least in Australia with it’s excessive compliment of bureaucratic Karens, is the 30 > 50 > 70 > 60 > 40 > 30 > SCHOOL ZONE > 80 > 40 > 50 > 30 nightmare.
Which does two things, raises state revenue and causes drivers to spend way to much time concentrating on how fast they are going rather than driving to suit the conditions and paying focusing to what’s going on in front of them.
And don’t get me started on the pot holes.
You only need one roundabout to be able to drive for hours without seeing a traffic light. It’s one of the main features of loops.
[edit: for clarity, I am not against roundabouts]
I don't have real expertise in civil engineering
Traffic lights have a smaller physical footprint and require less construction activity.
Traffic lights fit on a cost spectrum from two stop sighs, to four stop signs, to stop signs plus blinking lights, to non-trivial signaling.
First make it work. Then make it good. Then make it fast.
Engineering is not a one size fits all discipline.
[edit: I have a background in urban planning, architecture, and real-estate development]
You forgot roundabouts with traffic lights.
Here’s one in Australia near Perth:
https://youtu.be/h8lhX9Q6Z5g?si=eloUWLcH8q3eJiZH
And I’m certain I’ve driven through other roundabouts with traffic lights in other states.
I know of a couple in NSW: one in Albion Park, and another in Bomaderry.
They work well when the peak-hour traffic tends to block some of the entrances. You can use the lights to allow the blocked entrances to flow, then turn the lights off out of peak-hour.
In England we even have roundabouts of roundabouts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
The footprint is a cost problem once. They don't need power, computers, or technicians to come out and maintain the equipment constantly.
A roundabout can be as simple as a circle painted in the middle of an intersection, plus a bit of signage. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.
Or a dog: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roundabout_dog&ol...>
I wish local councils wouldn't insist on putting in shrubs that block the line of site across the roundabout.
Agreed, it can be really hard to get around a roundabout as a pedestrian if it's not designed for it, and then they make it so both you and people entering don't know each other are there until you're about to get hit.
I like roundabouts over lights at small intersections. I still prefer simple give way/stop that changes the next intersection over roundabouts.
Lights suck unless there’s sufficient traffic.
They replaced a intersection near me that would get backed up very badly during rush hour with a roundabout that has a much higher capacity and never seems to get backed up.
I've lived some places where 4-way stops were just abused, like Sugarland, TX. England and Ireland are full of roundabouts, some of which are incredibly small, just a painted dot, and some are giant multi-lane white-knuckle nightmares. There are places with good traffic light setups, but traffic lights generally suffer from the same problems of sometimes stopping traffic for no good reason while also encouraging excess speed.
In my current city, I can identify at least 3 intersections that would be better as a roundabout, but I don't have my hopes up.
Yeah, I know what you mean by abusing 4 way stops being abused. Thankfully I moved from there a long time ago.
Also where I moved from recently, they changed a roundabout intersection into a traffic lights intersection. And the traffic used to flow. Now it’s a stand still.
There’s always so many little insights when you use the road daily that a planner will never have unless they do the same.
Melbourne where I am kind of close to now, has an absolute clusterf*ck of overpasses, underpasses, toll ways, free ways, tunnels all coming & going out of a neatly planned grid. They probably think it’s planning perfection while driving it as a non-resident is an absolute nightmare. Sydney which is famously poo poo’d for not being planned in Australia is 10x more straight forward to drive.
This dreaming about roundabouts is as American as the fantasies about using metric one day.
They’re being used often in new construction areas. It’s just not likely that they’ll be retrofitted to existing areas due to needing more space than regular intersections.
They are everywhere in the areas around me now. I had a similar sentiment at one time and now they seem pretty common.
I think roundabouts work fantastically well in some places but in others they are unnecessary and in others don't work as well as alternatives. Maybe that's obvious but every so often I feel like they are overapplied — probably because of what you're mentioning, along with the fact they were underapplied in other areas in the past. I've come to like them usually but sometimes it feels like the civil engineers were having too much fun at the cost of practicality.
Roundabouts are much more common in the US than they were 10 years ago.
This led me down somewhat of a rabbit hole looking at roundabouts, then to the official roundabout page from the Department of Transportation, where I couldn't believe my eyes to see that National Roundabout Week is next week: https://highways.dot.gov/safety/intersection-safety/nrw
It is so funny to read this because in reality, roundabouts are some of the worst traffic congestion makers :)
This is completely wrong. Well designed roundabouts work very well.
I think I prefer maybe the simplicity of 4 way (or even 2 way) stops
There are some funny intersection videos from idk what country that have no stop signs or lights or roundabouts and somehow lots of people still manage to get through them
The big difference is that when you have a collision at a 4-way or 2-way stop, it is almost always a "T-Bone" collision, where all the energy hits at a right angle. These collisions kill, especially at speed.
A similar collision on a roundabout is almost always a "glancing" blow, at an angle, and rarely causes injury or death.
Roundabouts force you to slow down when approaching. Stop signs can be ignored. Roundabouts can't.
I was in Aruba recently, and I discovered that they had entirely replaced their traffic lights with roundabouts. Easier to maintain and more efficient in the island's low-traffic regime.
Roundabouts are superior to other intersection types in nearly every case. Two lane roundabouts are a notable exception.
Two lane roundabouts are fantastic if you’re familiar with the intersection. If you’re not it’s too easy to get shunted out of the roundabout early
I was hoping that it was "404 not found"
My best friend is a highly experienced civil engineer, specialized in designing intersections. His take on roundabouts:
- They are adored by urban planners because they look nice and you can put a statue or fountain in the middle
- They reduce T-bone collisions
However:
- Small fender benders and sideswipes are much more frequent
- They use way more area
- They work where each direction has an approximately equal amount of traffic. However, usually, one direction (north/south, say) has a larger share of the traffic. In those cases, the bulk of traffic all needs to slow down, downshift, turn a bit in one direction and then turn a bit in the other direction for the minority of traffic that's bleeding on or off the main artery. In those cases, a traffic light is better because the timing can be adjusted to the proportion of traffic from each direction (and more flexible since it can be adjusted over time).
- Finally, they're also (mostly) worse for cyclists and pedestrians.
Essentially, they have use cases, especially in small towns, and they're pretty, but they're usually not the right engineering solution.
It would be interesting to know your (friend's) country of origin.
The key disadvantage of a roundabout is that it takes up more space and is harder to setup than plopping down a couple of stop signs.
They are awesome otherwise, I do like them better for low traffic intersections though because I don't have to stop and think about if the next car is going to yield or not.
I think here in China we are not super fan of roundabouts. But we got a 4-lane roundabout with traffic lights [1] and a roundabout on elevated roads with traffic lights. [2]
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/rY6AH8nUEKvRuk1LA
[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wea6Wt5FwHgKmG4C9