Here's my personal favorite, Horace James Circle in Newton, MA. People average around 35-40 mph through this thing!

 

Clover leafs are typically dangerous interchanges for highways and depending on the area they can get pretty clogged. We have a very poorly designed one here for the I-10/I-49 interchange.

The benefit of the CFI is that you no longer need turn arrows at the lights which means longer green times which means more traffic getting through the intersection.

Bottom line is every transportation module is a band-aid. The only way to keep up with traffic is through city planning and most cities are clueless on how to properly plan roads.

And yes, CFI's are much, much cheaper than overpass interchanges.

 

I was wondering where I was missing the 4th roundabout.

If the roads are empty and I have the time, I sometimes loop my way through the circles. The new one by the shops has gotten more crowded as the shops open, but it's my favorite of all of them because it's tight and flat, unlike the ones flanking 29 which have a rather big off-camber crown to them. I am so used to flying through those circles that I will forget when I am driving something else and attack the circles a bit fast. The kicker is, my old 1-ton diesel 4WD can take those things remarkably fast without any fuss whatsoever. Other cars and trucks I drive through there sometimes give me a squealfest at moderate speeds.

 

When I was in England about 4 years ago I was being driven around by some friends and we went through the "magic roundabout" in Swindon and it was interesting. Going CW then CCW around the traffic circles was very interesting especially since I was in the left hand front seat just looking for the brake pedal. I survived and we all laughed about it afterwards but man it was scary having people driving every which way.
I will say this though the traffic circles over there make life very easy and I'd like to see more of them around the States.

Hey Omtoast is this one of the "old lady" speedbump areas you traverse? (It's between I-95 and Foxwoods)

 

DC, 23rd and M. best and fast moving.
nothing like weaving in-n-out on a circle.

 

Where the slow of mind, brave only behind the wheel and weak of bladder meet to create carnage.

I love driving this thing all hours of the day and will go out of my way to see the havoc that it instills.

I have been known to just take laps around on the inner lane. Though I was almost killed there, I have no fear.

If they put a webcam on it I would pay money just to watch.

The problem is that it is the only one and people just can't stand change ot something different.

Plus there are more people in this area over 65 years of age then any place out side of heavens waiting room

 

But, who is counting?????? Nice picture.

 

There is a great one down here at the end of SR 60 at Clearwater Beach - some genius in city planning decided that it would be cool to spend lots of money, so the circle was adorned with masonry brick and landscaping, to the point where people entering the roundabout couldn't see the traffic coming around it until it was too late.

Clearwater has its share of geriatrics in white buicks, and it was way too much for them to deal with, so the city spent even more money taking all the crap down.

 

They are messing around with another roundabout in Southern New Jersey, the one between Somers Point and Ocean City. It isn't TOO bad in the winter, but in the Summer it is a ZOO. Everytime I make a wine trip to Circle Liquors, I go the back way and leave the same way. I know that the wine would age more if I went via the circle, but I don't want to age that much. I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up.
Motor On. Safely.

 

Nope -- only few times I've done that one it was completely empty. The two in a row are by Pfizer, in New London.

 

That one is nasty because there's something like 5 roads all coming together at that point and plenty of foot traffic too because of all the shops.

 

Yes. ADOT is building one of the first of 26+- in our state. Ours is on AZ89 at a lightly used intersection. The uproar was intense, made great conversation on the local radio shows. Sure, we don't like change... especially when there hasn't been a problem at this intersection!

The County put one in overnight in a park. Locals hated it; it was a bad variation. It was taken out overnight also!

A recent golf-course subdivision has two circles on their residential arterials. The speed limit is 30mph. I love it when someone has to tailgate me, when I'm doing almost 40. I don't even slow down, twitch the steering, goose the gas halfway around, and I'm out before the tailgater gets halfway around. They haven't followed so close afterwards (yet).

Considering the lack of courtesy nowadays, and methheads driving dumpsters on wheels, and ever increasing population, I don't think they're going to help on highways. This majic circle looks like a joke! Just painting the stripes must take a week! I believe in the K.I.S.S. principle.

 

The one picture on the magic roundabout page where you are looking over the dash of the MINI...I just cannot wrap my mind around that. Just too many damn cars going in too many different directions! I would love to see an hour long video of that roundabout at rush hour, just to see how it works.

As far as roundabouts go, by my dads house they put one in (about an hour outside of Seattle), and I think it is fantastic, however there was a major uproar about getting rid of the light and putting in the circle. It has been there now for about 10 years or so. They also put two new ones in at the end of two on and off ramps off of the freeway where there is a new development with houses and shops and such, and the major problem with those is that people do not yield, they stop! Ugh, so frustrating!

 

"Dumpsters on wheels". That's a new SUV description for me and when I see someone open the tailgate, it looks like a dumpster inside. Kiddie seats, toys, crammed everywhere and only the driver in the vehicle most times. It looks like they have half their house in back.

 

In some cases, it is their house!
Can you imagine that stuff shifting around in the roundabout?

There is a set of roundabouts in Phoenix at an interchange. My summer neighbor lives off of it. Gravel dump trucks occasionally tip over in it. He says it's a joke. They recently added another lane, but it's worse. He avoids rush hour (like half the day).

 

Roundabouts are a good thing, but Americans (especially in Minnesota) don't seem to understand the concept of mergeing. They can't even safely get onto a freeway via a straight ramp for cryin' out loud!.

(The mergeing problem is my biggest driving pet peeve...)

 

I'm a big fan of the double roundabout on Rt 16 in Belmont near the Fresh Pond Plaza. It's great at night when there are no cars, but horrible to go through during rush hour. It tends to back up pretty badly.

 

the problem with circles is there are not enough of them. They are so rare, that most drivers have no idea how to navigate them. We have one, it's called the town square here, and it's a good thing there is never a huge number of cars traveling through. The locals follow the custom to yield to cars entering the circle, while the law states it's the cars already in the circle that have the right of way. If you follow the law, you could very well get hit.

 

The best one is in Warren Michigan Too bad Google Earth hasn't been updated as this round about was just completed last year. It has four branches. One comes in from west from about 2 miles away and is brandnew concrete, five lane with long sweeper that could be taken well over a hundred. The second one leads from an adjacent roadway and has a banked left/right sweeper coming in. A third leads to the adjacent freeway and is also banked left right sweeper. The last one is boring straight highway feed. If driven at the right time of day, you could blast in from the west side sweeper at nearly 130, brake very hard, into the round about, left/right sweeper at around 70, merge into the highway, brake hard and execute a Michigan turn around, left/right again and back onto the round about, take the third branche, accelerate hard left/right and merge onto the freeway. If the cops haven't caught you by then, then they were probably just watching you for the fun of it

 

 

That is a good one! I go through there 2-3 times a week. It's great, the two circles are what, maybe 1/10th of a mile apart?

 

Wow.. I can't believe I missed this thread

I travel through a traffic circle known locally as Suicide Circle. If you click the link, you'll see it brings 5 streets together (you'll want to zoom in to see it)

I pass through this twice a day every day to get to work. It's easy enough to navigate when empty... during rush-hour, it's a parking lot which turns into a game of dodgeball. I just make sure I get into the intersections first and make sure the car next to me clearly sees me.

 

What is installed in the center of these roundabouts?
I want to suggest a statue the now retired regional ADOT administrator flipping us the bird for our soon to be built roundabout!

Thanks for posting the arial photos.

 

I can't believe how paranoid Americans (and Canadians for that matter) are about round-abouts. I come from city (Canberra, Australia) where they are everywhere. The are awesome - traffic flows beautifully because everyone knows how to use them. The only time they don't work is when someone who dosen't know how to use them makes a mess of it for everyone else!

I've been on a round-about in the middle east that was 5 lanes wide, with the same number of lanes feeding into it from four roads. It was awesome to see because NO ONE stopped at all. Of course, it was sorta scary, because the only rule of driving in that particular town was that whoever had their nose further forward had right of way....haha...

I hate traffic lights and stop signs. I'd never encountered a four-way stop sign until I visited Canada. WTF??? That's horrible for traffic control! Actually, I also saw four-way stop signs on a 120km/h road in South Africa - now that was stupid!!

LONG LIVE ROUND-ABOUTS!!!!

 

The advantages of traffic circles are well researched and documented, we might all do well to start getting used to them. If you're familiar with a congested circle in your area, stop and think about what it would be like if they tried to handle the traffic volume with stoplights. It's usually much worse. The real problem is too many cars and not enough roads. Circles provide shorter average wait times, and more importantly, any accidents that do happen are less critical. Read or talk to a traffic engineer and they will tell you that circles produce fewer accidents than lights. There is very little chance of a fatal accident at a circle, in contrast to stop signs or a light. You can't 'run' a traffic circle like you can run a red light, (well, I guess you could, but you'd have to be a complete f'ing idiot). The rest of the world seems to do fine with them, I guess maybe there's something in the American pysche that makes the concept of 'yield' unacceptable.

http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_...n_circles.html

http://www.ci.covington.wa.us/docume...ut04052005.pdf