sggoodri

I like one-lane mini-roundabouts, particularly when they replace a stop-signed or signalized intersection.

I dislike multi-lane roundabouts where speeds can grow and lane changes inside the roundabout are required.

When I grew up, "traffic circle" meant a huge rotary where speeds could easily exceed 40 mph.

tallard

Oh you're absolutely right! I only use the term grandpa as a metaphor cause when I was growing up in Eastern Quebec, it was usually the grandpas doing it!

I had a 2 month job in Miami, Deering Yacht club, that required me to commute Fort Lauderdale Miami, usually 1 hour after each rush hour. I found that indeed I drove 85 mph as much on the right lanes as on the left lanes. My most common left lane car was the brown or green canvastop convertibles!

I've never cycled those monster circles in Hollywood, they're as big as Place de la Concorde, but reduced lanes and exits makes for faster speeds, have you cycled them?

Pepper Grinder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_Traffic_Circle

This thing scares me.

tallard

Yep, looks like the Hollywood, FL, ones but with more exits. The problem with these circles is there too expansive, European roundabouts in my limited tourist experience are more compact, force motorists to negotiate tighter turns, making everything a little more arduous, and a little safer I think.

filtersweep

When I lived in Minneapolis, we had ONE roundabout on a very popular bike route. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people try to take a left by driving against traffic in it. Also, they must have had a dozen yield signs to explain the right of way, but as often as not, drivers would stop in the roundabout to let other drivers in. Finally, this has nothing to do with Europeans thinking for Americans--- it appears your comprehension needs a bit of work.

zoltani

What is so difficult about traversing a traffic circle? Yield to the cars in the circle, and always use a turn signal to let other know which exit you will be taking. Traffic circles are often more efficient that signaled intersections, and many traffic engineers in the US agree with this, however, they are not widely used because of the publics fear of them. Of course we must fear what we are unfamiliar with.

Personally i like traffic circles, and most that are multi-lane are connected to major arterials, roads that i usually wouldn't take by bike anyway.
I have noticed a couple of them around here, but they are very poorly signed (they have stop signs instead of yield signs), and more often than not people just don't know what to do. Again, this is the fault of the signs put up leading to them, and the motorists inability to take a few moments to use their brain to figure out how it works.

sincewednesday

Whoever designed the local MUP with a ridiculously tiny traffic circle must've thought they were clever, but in practice it's a disaster. Most people go the direct, aka "wrong," way around the circle, and lots of people just go right through the center.

lubes17319

Love'em.

Be riding'em again daily in Frogland starting Thursday avo.

John E

Where I live (north coastal San Diego County), one generally cannot get from Point A to Point B without using one or more major arterials for a significant percentage of the trip.

Again, tight-radius one-lane circles with a design speed of 15mph/25kph are great in my book, but I strongly oppose multilaners as a bicyclist and even more fervently as a pedestrian or jogger.

musician

haven't you been reading this forum? why would you be at the edge? TAKE THE LANE!!

SirMike1983 

That's sort of the irony- the one time I took the lane in this circle I hit the pothole- by edge I also mean right in the center of the lane where the circle exits to a road. In this case it was in the center of the lane at about midnight when no one was on the road. There was in there was a moon caliber crater where Mass Ave. entered Westmoreland circle, right in the center of the lane in the shadows; I never saw it coming since my lamp burned out earlier in the ride. It did a number on my front fork, but I managed to correct it later. They finally re-paved that section this past year and got rid of the hole. That thing was a monster. But to the credit of the Westrick rim- the wheel was still arrow true after hitting the hole- the fork actually took more damage than the wheel. After that I memorized where that hole was; I never hit it again.

Ironically as well I'm not really a take the lane kind of rider. I'm pretty slow and steady so I stay right. Despite that I end up taking at least part of the lane often- I feel compelled to take the lane in many scenarios because the shoulder always seems full of damned debris, especially on River Road here in Bethesda. I find glass, rocks, plastic, garbage, etc whenever I ride so I creep out into the lane some so I don't have to ride over that junk. If the cars are in such a hurry they can change into the left lane (it's a larger road) and pass me comfortably on the left in a full lane like sane vehicles should. I admit feeling a bit foolish when drivers honk and yell at me, but I'd feel even more foolish if I just rode through the crap that piles up outside the fogstripe.

That said, the DC circles are in another league from the old Goshen rotary in Litchfield County where I grew up.

pgpdlr

+++++1

musician

i was just joking with you about taking the lane. true, the DC circles are special. i've just been in cars there. at least in my limited experience, the speeds in DC circles were slow, which i'd think would make it safer for you as a cyclist.

SirMike1983 

Oh I know- taking the lane in some of these things means imminent death

It's actually hard even for cars to take the lane in some of these circles because the lanes don't actually make sense. There are circles with one center lane that actually never allows you to leave the circle. If you were to be in that lane you would just go around and around. When cars get into it they normally just cut across 2-3 lanes of traffic without looking to escape the circle. Drivers often randomly and rapdly shift lanes without a look because they realize they're getting close to their exit. If you were in a lane when that happened you'd just get bowled over. I've actually seen cars side swipe eachother because one tried to escape the center right into another car.

e0richt

down here in south jersey, they have started to change that by using stop signs at each intersection...
they tried to use yield signs but people ignored them... they treat the stop signs as yield signs now that I think of it...

BarracksSi

DC traffic circles suck. Really, they do. They have so many lights because pedestrians are the Chosen People in this town, and every traffic light on a DC circle is there to allow pedestrians to walk across all 3.5 lanes.

(I can rant about DC pedestrians, but that'll go off topic)

If that involved the kind of movement I'm thinking of, I can imagine that the driver's view was blocked by her A-pillar. I've had a few close calls when I couldn't see somebody for the same reason.

As long as drivers think that they need to tap the brakes to change lanes, they're going to mess up in traffic circles. They need to be TAUGHT how to use them. Speaking of which -- when was the last time anyone in the US was trained in driving traffic circles & roundabouts? I know that I wasn't.

I was sold on the idea when I first visited England. There was a small roundabout -- small enough that it had no island -- for an intersection of at least three two-lane roads. It was busy, maybe a hundred cars per minute, but I never saw a car for more than a few seconds. They were in and out with barely any fuss. If there were stop signs, or even a traffic light, it would have been much worse.

In my hometown, they converted a multi-way intersection into a "peanut". Check it out:
https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...&t=h&z=19&om=1

They used to have multiple stop signs and a triangular island in the right-middle. The thing was, not every street had as many stop signs -- Happy Hollow Blvd, going east to west, had a stop sign at 50th and another one at Country Club Ave. Saddle Creek, approaching from the SE, only had a stop sign at 50th, then continued through without stopping. It was confusing to us longtime residents, enough that my parents made sure to teach & quiz me before letting me try driving it. As the city gained new residents, navigating these multi-way intersections became a lost art, and the accident rate started going up.

The city wanted to put in a circular-shaped circle, but the plan would have wiped out several houses and businesses. They somehow came up with this peanut shape, which actually works really well. It's well-signed, drivers have no way to turn except counterclockwise, curbs that keep drivers in line are also rounded to avoid severely damaging wayward cars (along with a healthy inside berm, just in case), and the peanut shape (along with some rather fun elevation changes) inherently keeps speeds down. It's safer and flows better than the earlier intersection(s) ever did.

Longfemur

My experience with a small turning circle on my loop is that half the drivers don't know what to do in relation to other cars, let alone bicycles. It makes for a very dangerous situation, even if you as the cyclist do everything perfectly. Turning circles would be great otherwise, ie. if everyone understood what to do, but too many drivers just have no clue what the heck they are doing there.

frymaster

which traffic circles in calgary were bad? the only ones that leap to mind for me are the super small ones in mnt royal and i, personally, love them. no more stop signs, easy to navigate and certainly less threatening than a four-way that joe-average driver is going to cruise through anyway.

now the speed cushions... i hate those things. especially as a pedestrian. when there's no speed bumps i can easily gauge whether i have enough time to cross the street before an on-coming car gets to where i am. the speed bumps play total havoc with that. is the motorist going to slow down or just ramp over them? if s/he slows down, by how much? drives me crazy!