I was formulating my own post on the subject of traffic circles (yes, I am a geek) when I noticed today that Fark beat me to it. How fortuitous!
I’ve driven around a few local traffic circles during the past week and have decided they’re a smart idea. First off, they are known as “traffic calmers,” meaning they slow traffic down. While this is certainly true if you are comparing them with a street lit by green lights, they actually speed up traffic that ordinarily would be waiting for red lights. This not only means you’re not kept waiting at the light, it means that your car is not sitting there idling. Thus, not only are you not wasting time, there is less ozone being created by idled engines. Sweet.
Traffic circles are also safer. Instead of having two directions of traffic to avoid (left and right of you as you pass through an intersection), you only have to look one way: your left. Also, the only cars going fast in a circle are on the NASCAR circuit. You don’t have to worry that some jackass is going to appear out of nowhere and sideswipe you. If you do get smacked, you only have yourself to blame for not looking in the ONE direction you have to look. No one can “run” a traffic circle.
Traffic circles are also much more appealing visually. You can actually landscape a traffic circle, or even put a fountain there. Beats having an open, dirty square of pavement any day.
But the best reason to think about traffic circles is that the alternative we’ve got now – traffic lights – just doesn’t work. Traffic lights drive me nuts when I’m the only one waiting at an empty intersection. It’s a waste. And there are scores of intersections in town with faulty traffic lights: lights that provide turn signals to phantom cars.
What really drives me nuts about lights is how many of them aren’t synchronized. You can be stopped at one intersection, and just when the light turns green and just when you’re moving at the speed limit, the light at the next street turns red in front of you. Stop and go. Stop and go. Ridiculous.
When the power goes out, as it did during last winter’s ice storm, intersections with traffic lights become free-for-alls. I was more afraid of driving around town than I was from falling tree limbs. Seriously.
Traffic circles solve all of these problems. They keep your car’s momentum up, making your drive go much smoother. They’re practical and they’re attractive. I’m glad to see them popping up in the area. I really hope they catch on.
I totally agree, I don’t understand why we don’t use more traffic circles. Probably because someone has a big fat contract with the government.
They are much more friendly to the traffic flow, and they can eliminate the very deadly threat of someone t-boning you as they run through a red light.
is that many people from this area have been to Boston and know how much of a frickin cluster #$%$#% they really are to traffic.
Sorry, but traffic circles are one of those ideas that seems great until it’s implemented.
Boston’s problem is Boston’s drivers. 🙂
When my wife and I honeymooned in Scotland, we saw traffic circles everywhere (that plus driving on the left side of the road made it a surreal experience). In the busy areas, the traffic circles could be 3 or 4 lanes deep. In the really congested areas, the traffic circles had stop lights to regulate the incoming flow of traffic. Even with stoplights, they worked much better than intersections. I don’t think we saw a single intersection with traffic lights the whole time we were there.
Most of the traffic circles in Scotland didn’t have anything fancy in the middle. It was usually a small hill covered with grass, or maybe a dome of white brick. A few of the fancy ones had fountains or statues. You don’t want a flat, unobstructed center; otherwise, criminals/idiots will drive straight across it.
Speaking of criminals/idiots, the only problem with traffic circles is the moron who doesn’t follow the lane rules. If you’re turning at the next exit, you stay in the outside lane. If you’re turning at the second, third, etc. exit, you move to an inside lane, drive around the circle, then get into the outside lane to turn off. You’re always going to encounter some pinheads who sit in the outside lane and drive 3/4 of the way around the circle (these are the same pinheads who don’t know how a 4-way stop works and who think that red lights don’t apply to them…).
That’s a pretty blanketed statement. Try driving in heavy traffic around London, and then tell me traffic circles don’t work.
They are much safer than stop lights. They are much easier to maintain. And when the power goes out, you don’t have to worry about people losing all sense of how to handle themselves.
As someone else pointed out, there are rules in a traffic circle that, when followed, allow for a greater relief of traffic through an intersection than stop lights.