alt Hacker NewsI had to look up what a traffic circle is, but apparently it just means roundabout. And yes, I do want roundabouts, who wouldn't?
Is there any serious argument against them? I've heard they aren't common in America.
Replies
A general reason: they take up a lot of space. Not a problem in most of America, but that'd be a deal killer in Japan. If you're not familiar with Japanese neighborhoods, I'd recommend spending some time on street view - it's actually kinda cool. Make note of the parabolic mirrors at the intersections.
For America specifically: they're not a great fit for places where everything is spread out and the road system is sensibly designed. I can drive from one side of Tulsa to the other (on streets, not freeways) in a fraction of the time I could drive across a similarly-sized European city. That's because the city itself is designed for cars. It has straight major streets with 40-45 mph speed limits that form a grid. Neighborhoods sit inside the grid and the streets in them curve with the landscape. In most of the city you have maybe 3-5 traffic lights per mile on the major streets, so unless it's rush hour you get minimal slowdowns. Sometimes I can drive several miles without hitting a red light.
The ideal situation is to have a straight road with no traffic directly between you and where you want to go. Obviously, that's not possible. So you have to compromise. Roundabouts suck, but they're better than almost any other option in places that have twisty narrow streets and lots of pedestrians. Many (most?) American cities aren't like that (at least to the extent European cities are), so roundabouts don't make as much sense here.
They take up a lot of space and they can be inconvenient and potentially unsafe to pedestrians. Unsafe for the same reason that right turns on red are unsafe: drivers are looking to their left for traffic and not to their right.
They were rare in the US before, I want to say, 15 or 20 years ago but I see them all the time now and new ones are always being installed. Good traffic devices, with the above tradeoffs in mind.
> I've heard they aren't common in America.
They are in the Northeast. But they don't always keep bad drivers away.
> I've heard they aren't common in America
They're getting more popular in the Puget Sound area. We have been re-engineering streets to include roundabouts all over the place. I think they're a great thing, but too many people still stop at the wrong time.
The first few roundabouts I encountered were terrible. One was next to a school, yet it was too small to be navigated by the school bus. One had stop signs instead of yield at every entrance.
As a result, I hated them until years later, when I encountered one that was done correctly. After that, I completely flipped my opinion. Done right, they can completely beat a traffic light for wait time and throughput.