Worlds Worst Roundabout

RyanB

RyanB

Super Administrator
Management Council Member
PoA Supporter
Joined
Jul 21, 2010
Messages
16,212
Location
Chattanooga, TN
Display Name
Display name:
Ryan
Can anybody explain how this works? Looks like it’s just a hodgepodge mess of traffic squeezing in between cars and cutting across lanes. Is there actually a system at play here, or is it as dysfunctional as it looks? I can imagine there’s a high number of accidents here each day.

 
It’s not that bad. I lived in Paris for a while and drove through it hundreds of times. There’s a method to it but it requires the right amount of aggressiveness. Natives tend to be in the right range. A timid tourist can screw the flow up pretty badly.
 
You couldn’t pay me enough to drive in Paris. I stood watching that roundabout last year in person and it’s a lot of nope.

I am sure it would be fine after a while. After two years here the skinny streets no longer give me panic attacks. Progress.
 
Place L'etoile isn't the worst roundabout by far. I was just in Paris last month and was dodging traffic there as well.

Swindon is interesting:

Some of the ones in Asia are really scary for the seemingly lack of rules, large number of cars, and swarms of scooters converging on the circle.
 
Beverly, East Yorkshire has the traffic light monstrosity....42 lights within a 100 yard radius.
 
I've designed several roundabouts in place of road widening and turn lanes at subdivision and apartment entrances. The planning office was really bent on trying to put them in as many places as possible. So Forsyth county North Carolina can blame the planning department. Now, as I drive through that county I don't notice as many more new roundabouts at newer developments. In the right place at the right time, they work great, but that many lanes would barely work in the US. It would be a pile of wreckage and road rage.

And driving in any foreign country is a complete clown show compared to US roads. I don't think I've ever seen a stoplight obeyed in Mexico.
 
6a5.jpg
 
Ryanb said:
Can anybody explain how this works? Looks like it’s just a hodgepodge mess of traffic squeezing in between cars and cutting across lanes. Is there actually a system at play here, or is it as dysfunctional as it looks? I can imagine there’s a high number of accidents here each day.

Click to expand...

I am sure it works if you know how to drive around it. But I thought it was the stupidest idea to have several back-to-back roundabouts in OSH at nearly every exit off 41. It was a complete nightmare to figure out which way to go, with lots of out of town folks like me confused.
 
Ryanb said:
Can anybody explain how this works? Looks like it’s just a hodgepodge mess of traffic squeezing in between cars and cutting across lanes. Is there actually a system at play here, or is it as dysfunctional as it looks? I can imagine there’s a high number of accidents here each day.

Click to expand...

I have a video I shot back in 1992 from the top of the Arc d' Triumph. On a Sunday morning. Traffic virtually nonexistent. Panning along the skyline. Two cars in the circle. And you hear this "crunch, tinkle, tinkle" in the sound. Two cars, the only two cars in the circle, and they had a collision. We had driven into Paris the day or so before. I was driving, my wife was navigating. Trying to find our hotel. I told her, having been to Paris before with her and the rest of the high school band, that if she routed me trough that traffic circle I would divorce her on the spot. She didn't and we'll celebrate 46 years the end of July. :D

flyingron said:
Place L'etoile isn't the worst roundabout by far. I was just in Paris last month and was dodging traffic there as well.

Swindon is interesting:
Click to expand...

I went to Swindon a few times back with I worked for Intel. The locals are convinced that the damned things breed. They refer specifically to that traffic circle.
 
Fiveslide said:
I've designed several roundabouts in place of road widening and turn lanes at subdivision and apartment entrances. The planning office was really bent on trying to put them in as many places as possible. So Forsyth county North Carolina can blame the planning department. Now, as I drive through that county I don't notice as many more new roundabouts at newer developments. In the right place at the right time, they work great, but that many lanes would barely work in the US. It would be a pile of wreckage and road rage.

And driving in any foreign country is a complete clown show compared to US roads. I don't think I've ever seen a stoplight obeyed in Mexico.
Click to expand...

New York seems to be having a love affair with roundabouts lately. The problem is that as you say, they only make sense in the right place and the right time -- and those places and times are far fewer than the number of roundabouts they've been building.

A few months ago I had occasion to drive through some dinky little city that had four or five of them in a row on what passed for the main drag. In case the idiocy of that isn't self-apparent, remember that the traffic already in the circle has the right of way, and the traffic entering the circle has to yield. But what happens when the traffic at at a roundabout exceeds the traffic at the previous one? The answer is that the entering traffic backs up all the way into the previous circle.

In the best-case scenario, the drivers in the first circle would just, well, circle until they could exit, and all the other drivers would wait to enter the circle. The problem is that even assuming the best-mannered and most skillful drivers in the world, the circle itself blocks the view of the mess at the next roundabout, thanks partly to the planners' additional measure of idiocy as expressed in putting monuments in the middle of every roundabout. So drivers wishing to enter the traffic can't tell that the traffic from the next roundabout is backing up into the one they're about to enter.

On a more general note, I can't help but think that there's some graft involved in all this roundabout building. There's one about an hour from me that replaced a simple intersection of a county road coming off a state highway (County 357 and NY 28 in North Franklin, NY if you want to look it up). The county road terminates there and used to have a simple stop sign. For reasons that I can't even imagine, they decided to replace it with a roundabout.

It's just a simple roundabout and it doesn't create any problems. One would have to be an utter idiot to screw it up. It's just that it's completely unnecessary. County 357 is a lazy road with very little traffic at even the busiest hours. NY 28 is a bit busier during what passes for "rush hour," but it's still not exactly the Autobahn.

As far as I'm concerned, it looks to me like someone's brother-in-law needed the work. That's the only reason I can come up with for planting a roundabout there.

Rich
 
F17DED83-781C-4A97-BDFA-C84664500BFA.jpeg Pennsylvania is also seeing the roundabout as the solution to the worlds problems. Coming into KAVP they installed not one but two roundabouts. It’s hilarious.
 
OSH.png
sarangan said:
I am sure it works if you know how to drive around it. But I thought it was the stupidest idea to have several back-to-back roundabouts in OSH at nearly every exit off 41. It was a complete nightmare to figure out which way to go, with lots of out of town folks like me confused.
Click to expand...

This is Oshkosh.
View attachment 74569
 
Fiveslide said:
I don't think I've ever seen a stoplight obeyed in Mexico.
Click to expand...

Those are quickly changing to a mere suggestions here in New Mexico.

And someone thought roundabouts would be a good idea here in NM. I mean with the light traffic here why make a 270 degree turn to go left when taking the short way is quicker.??

If everyone understands a 4 way stop then traffic will move fairly quickly. Where I am from in Texas there was a major intersection that was a 4 way stop. Traffic flowed very well, until the city put in a stop light which created major delays.
 
The first one I was a part of was at the entrance to an apartment complex. There was probably 160 units with about 1.5ish parking spots for each. So, it replaced a functional intersection so that 240 cars could enter traffic. Didn't make a lick of sense to me, but I just put what the planning department requires on paper, which gets put on the ground.

That's what gets me, I don't think any planners I dealt with were PE's, but they told the engineers what needed to be designed like they knew better.
 
Re: Arc de Triumph roundabout
A few years ago our first full day in Paris our tour guide said she’d lived there for a few years before she dared it. We left town for Brugge, Belgium and Normandy before returning to Paris. We used the GPS to try to find CDG Airport and ended up in the above roundabout! Most of the traffic seemed to be going in concentric circles but a city bus driver just plowed straight across and you had to dodge him. I concentrated on driving while my YF counted exits.

That day started in Normandy with farmers blocking all but one lane on each direction and having a party in the median!
 
I've driven that silly US-41 @ 9th Ave countless times. Have to go around 4 circles just to get through.
 
There’s a couple of well-designed roundabouts in Wisconsin that require semis to find an alternate route...the won’t fit through. :rolleyes:
 
MauleSkinner said:
There’s a couple of well-designed roundabouts in Wisconsin that require semis to find an alternate route...the won’t fit through. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Those amateur engineers. I just put an 8' foot wide concrete sidewalk behind the back of curb. Nobody will ever walk in circles, I imagine, but semis can roll their trailer axles over it.
 
Fiveslide said:
Those amateur engineers. I just put an 8' foot wide concrete sidewalk behind the back of curb. Nobody will ever walk in circles, I imagine, but semis can roll their trailer axles over it.
Click to expand...
That is kind of how they do it in Germany. The center of the roundabout is a low enough curb and is cement so the buses hop up on there and make it around. You will also see some people drive straight through (as opposed to round) and the middle becomes a speed bump. Not sure how legal that is.
 
Ryanb said:
Can anybody explain how this works? Looks like it’s just a hodgepodge mess of traffic squeezing in between cars and cutting across lanes. Is there actually a system at play here, or is it as dysfunctional as it looks? I can imagine there’s a high number of accidents here each day.

Click to expand...

Far more impressive than the cars are the bicycles/scooters/motorcycles filtering through that mess. Looks like a blast!
 
There's a roundabout that always kills me at the split from US169 and US59 near Garnett, KS. It's not particularly congested there from a traffic standpoint, and it kind of comes out of nowhere when you're cruising 70mph down the 4-lane highway and you have to slow down for a roundabout in the middle of nowhere. I can imagine that it's probably caught a few people by surprise at night who don't know about it. I always just shake my head a bit when I'm running from Tulsa to KC. It's not the world's worst roundabout, but it may be one of the world's most unneeded implementations of a roundabout. I'm sure the cost was much lower than a traditional hwy overpass/interchange, but still the interruption of traffic velocity on a highway is odd.
 
Roundabouts can serve a good purpose. Near where I live there used to be a 'T' intersection of two secondary highways. We used to have fatal collisions there every year. Somebody turning left getting t-boned at 60 mph. And others turning in front of motorcycles "they didn't see" (very popular motorcycle route through the hills in summer).

Four or five years ago the county installed a roundabout with 'S' curve approaches. Virtually no collisions and not one fatal since. Also means one slows down but rarely needs to stop at times of lighter traffic. Biggest problem now is every now and then an over-exuberant semi driver will try to take it too fast and dump his load to the outside.
 
Why go the long way around a roundabout...

 
Last edited:
I like roundabouts. Done correctly, they allow a much higher flow of traffic than 4-way stops(which pretty much nobody but North America uses, see Mythbusters for comparison). They can be confusing for people that are not used to them, but that's not roundabouts' fault. I've driven in Paris(before GPS, and constantly getting lost with a small walking atlas) and it's yeah, some of the circles look insane(rules are a bit different on them too), but if you just follow the other cars, you will get used to them pretty quickly.

Roundabouts in USA vary from useful to useless to outright self-defeating, but usually eliminate the annoying 4-way stops
 
genna said:
I like roundabouts. Done correctly, they allow a much higher flow of traffic than 4-way stops(which pretty much nobody but North America uses, see Mythbusters for comparison). They can be confusing for people that are not used to them, but that's not roundabouts' fault. I've driven in Paris(before GPS, and constantly getting lost with a small walking atlas) and it's yeah, some of the circles look insane(rules are a bit different on them too), but if you just follow the other cars, you will get used to them pretty quickly.

Roundabouts in USA vary from useful to useless to outright self-defeating, but usually eliminate the annoying 4-way stops
Click to expand...


I like them too. Never had an issue with any of the ones I've used. I'd prefer that all 4 way stops be replaced with them where space allows.
 
we have them in our area. Apparently someone thinks they are the cat's meow.

Although they move traffic....they aren't any safer. We have more accidents....people just don't know how to yield and enter or exit. o_O
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
we have them in our area. Apparently someone thinks they are the cat's meow.

Although they move traffic....they aren't any safer. We have more accidents....people just don't know how to yield and enter or exit. o_O
Click to expand...


Well, yeah, because...Maryland.
 
Count me in as one who likes roundabouts. However, folks in these parts seem stymied by them. But when everyone driving on them has enough active brain cells, they work exceptionally well in keeping traffic moving.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
we have them in our area. Apparently someone thinks they are the cat's meow.

Although they move traffic....they aren't any safer. We have more accidents....people just don't know how to yield and enter or exit. o_O
Click to expand...

Not safer? — every study I’ve seen shows more low speed collisions but dramatically fewer fatalities and severe injuries from high speed blown stop signs / traffic lights.
 
Crashnburn said:
Re: Arc de Triumph roundabout
A few years ago our first full day in Paris our tour guide said she’d lived there for a few years before she dared it. We left town for Brugge, Belgium and Normandy before returning to Paris. We used the GPS to try to find CDG Airport and ended up in the above roundabout! Most of the traffic seemed to be going in concentric circles but a city bus driver just plowed straight across and you had to dodge him. I concentrated on driving while my YF counted exits.

That day started in Normandy with farmers blocking all but one lane on each direction and having a party in the median!
Click to expand...

Fortunately, last year I was already on that side of Paris when I headed for CDG to dump the rental car. You want a scary picture of the circle around the Arc? When the high school band was in Europe in 1971 we went across that traffic on foot. We found out about the underground passages after we were already at the Arc. And, we survived (not sure how).

Bruges (to use the other spelling) is a lovely city. I had some meetings there in 2013 and returned last year with my wife so she could see it.

NealRomeoGolf said:
That is kind of how they do it in Germany. The center of the roundabout is a low enough curb and is cement so the buses hop up on there and make it around. You will also see some people drive straight through (as opposed to round) and the middle becomes a speed bump. Not sure how legal that is.
Click to expand...

I've seen these in England, as well. And the bump in the middle is a speed bump there, too. :p
 
sarangan said:
I am sure it works if you know how to drive around it. But I thought it was the stupidest idea to have several back-to-back roundabouts in OSH at nearly every exit off 41. It was a complete nightmare to figure out which way to go, with lots of out of town folks like me confused.
Click to expand...

Which is probably a problem only one week a year.
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
Not safer? — every study I’ve seen shows more low speed collisions but dramatically fewer fatalities and severe injuries from high speed blown stop signs / traffic lights.
Click to expand...

I think it depends where they are. When they're placed in intersections that were never problematic to begin with, which often is the case in New York, they're not safer. Whatever accidents they cause, minor as they may be, are more than ever happened there before.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I think it depends where they are. When they're placed in intersections that were never problematic to begin with, which often is the case in New York, they're not safer. Whatever accidents they cause, minor as they may be, are more than ever happened there before.

Rich
Click to expand...

Chicken or egg. The issue is not roundabouts but public's general unfamiliarity with how to use them. I.e. lack of training. The more people use them, the less of these minor accidents you will have. Seriously, this is not that complicated and it is significantly better than all-way stops or even many traffic lights. Most foreigners have about the same reaction to our obsession with stop signs and about the same or even more confusion when they see them for the first time: who goes first? why isn't anyone actually stopping? which direction is the guy going?

p.s. you can drive in most European countries for days without seeing a single stop sign :)
 
Crashnburn said:
Re: Arc de Triumph roundabout
A few years ago our first full day in Paris our tour guide said she’d lived there for a few years before she dared it. We left town for Brugge, Belgium and Normandy before returning to Paris. We used the GPS to try to find CDG Airport and ended up in the above roundabout! Most of the traffic seemed to be going in concentric circles but a city bus driver just plowed straight across and you had to dodge him. I concentrated on driving while my YF counted exits.

That day started in Normandy with farmers blocking all but one lane on each direction and having a party in the median!
Click to expand...

I have driven in Paris quite a few times over the years. My first encounter with the Arc de Triomphe was comical. I somehow got in the innermost lane -
and had an awful time escaping. Next time I was there they had installed barricades to limit the circle to two lanes. Seemed to work better - but it looks
like they don't do that anymore. IMHO the drivers in Paris are the most aggressive I have encountered.

A couple of years ago I visited France again (Corsica and Normandy/Brittany) - specifically avoiding Paris. I found the driving mostly pleasant, zipping through the
many roundabouts with minimal delays. The slickest arrangement I saw was a roundabout combined with an underpass. So I am a fan of roundabouts. A few have
been built where I live, but improvements in general take forever to happen

Dave
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top