Roundabouts
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Now that you guys have witnessed my master debatery, let me be serious.
Better for the environment? How much extra fuel and asphalt (mostly made of oil) did they use in creating these roundabouts? How much excess land did they have to use? Did they sacrifice green space? Easier driving encourages more driving and less walking and bicycling...
Time saver? More traffic volume moved through quicker? What about all the backed up traffic while they were building these things? Also, what happens regarding maintenance? Instead of blocking one lane and street, you will block almost all...
What was the cost? Was there a better use for the money?
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I've been in the Arc de Triomphe roundabout a few times. It's a little frightening if you are not used to it, but it works amazingly well (famously every few weeks a car runs out of fuel driving for hours on the innermost ring). No way in hell would the traffic flow nearly as well with an intersection.
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The best thing about roundabouts is you can avoid going to unpleasant places.
The M25 in SE England is the best example of this.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in Roundabouts:
Each of the streets leading to it has a stop sign.
Yeah, they did that on ours, too, even before the current debacle. It rather defeats the object.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@jolly said in Roundabouts:
None of our roundabouts have stop signs, they have yield signs.
Yes, that's what they're supposed to do.
Having said that, back where I used to live in the UK, the roundabouts got so ridiculously busy that they ended up putting in traffic lights as well.
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I have driven extensively in Carmel and their roundabouts are great. Except that they are at every freaking intersection in some areas. It gets tiresome.
That said, we are getting a lot more around me and they work pretty well. Where you get problems is the one laners where visibility is not as good coming up to it.
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@klaus said in Roundabouts:
The whole point of the roundabout is that those on the rotary have priority.
Yes, of course
I used to go through 4 rotaries on the way to school when I was in college in Boston. That route would have been unusable without them.
They could solve a lot of problems in Northern Virginia.
Where was I where they had rotaries but then the idiots had traffic lights in each of them? That destroyed the whole thing. Detroit maybe.
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@kincaid said in Roundabouts:
The US driver hadn't even figured out the zipper method of merging...
Another thing that frequently sends me into apoplexy.
I probably need to calm TF down.
Having said that, I was once stuck in a traffic jam in the UK near my parents house, and cars were actually blocking emergency service vehicles from getting through by using lanes they weren't supposed to. In the end a couple of large trucks took action to essentially run these drivers off the road in order to let the ambulance through. It was genuinely sickening to watch. I think on the whole US drivers are a lot better behaved when they hear an ambulance or fire engine.
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@copper said in Roundabouts:
While in the rotary, never make eye contact
Never
It is an admission that you see them.
A Bostonian will take advantage of that every time.
There's a legendary clip of a German TV journalist crossing the roundabout at Place de la Concorde in France live on TV, suggesting that the trick to crossing as a pedestrian is to avoid eye contact at all cost.
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
