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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Roundabouts would like a word. Properly designed ones don't need to dramatically lower speeds and are more efficient. And can easily be made pedestrian friendly. It doesn't have to be either or.
Can they though? What does a pedestrian friendly roundabout look like? The ones I’ve seen seem outright hostile.
I tried to find data but it doesn’t seem well studied. Since standard road design is so horrifically unsafe, unless it is substantially better it does not seem worth redesigning the intersection. I’d rather see that money go into something that has a proven benefit.
Further reading: https://streets.mn/2017/11/17/are-roundabouts-safer-for-pedestrians/
Crosswalk bridges. Something used in not just roundabouts.
Crosswalk bridges are pretty hostile to pedestrians. They need to be at least 4 meters/12 ft high, to accommodate standard lorries. Nobody likes climbing high stairs on every crossing. Even worse for wheelchair users.
If only we'd invented some sort of sloped surface. Maybe call it a "ramp"?
Scaling a 4 meter high ramps on every intersection sounds like a fucking nightmare
Yes, because no one anywhere has ever built a ramp that made sense.
You're intentionally being obtuse.
It doesn't matter how much sense your ramp makes, it still needs enough height to allow trucks to pass under it. That's a lot of height to gain. Any sensible ramp would be very long and take up a lot of space, and be very impractical to have to scale at every intersection.
It does lower speeds, you can’t just fly through a roundabout even if you’re going straight through. You can easily blast through a regular intersection at 100mph if you want.
They have higher throughput though, so it’s “faster” in that sense. Lower peak speeds, higher average speeds (as you’re not stopped for a long time).
Disagree
That's the point of a roundabout. It lowers speed at the crossing while also increasing throughput compared to a regular crossing.
So you can indeed lower speed at a crossing area while not lowering the speed of traffic overall, just by eliminating the waiting times.
Yeah, but then us Americans have to learn how to drive in circles and that’s really hard apparently.
Where do you live? Roundabouts are pretty common in much of the US anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu0VJ7Vo5pg
But to be fair... putting down a single sign at the start of every red divider even if it's still under construction would have prevented most of that insanity.
Roundabouts exist in the oldest parts of the US. Go east and you'll find them everywhere.
They lower speeds, just not to a stop which is good for traffic throughput and emissions.
Plus pedestrians don't have to look both ways to cross, since traffic is only coming from one direction
That's only if you are crossing through a roundabout, which I've never seen for pedestrians. Pedestrians have to walk around the roundabout as well, crossing the two way streets that leads up to it and still having to look both ways for cars leaving and entering the roundabout. This is usually helped by a median but a regular intersection can have a median as well to accomplish the same thing. These medians will also usually create a slip though like the author says in the video, which allows cars to take right turns at speed, if the roundabout is empty, without checking for the crosswalk they're turning into.
Alex, what is a "pedestrian bridge" for $500?
Roundabouts require drivers to concentrate on multiple incoming streams of traffic to find a gap. Their attention is already divided, and they are far more likely to miss a pedestrian than at a regular intersection.
In roundabouts you only need to look in one direction of incoming cars. In a regular 4-way intersection you have to look in three directions. Your comment makes no sense to me.
You mainly need to be looking right (flipped for anyone who doesn't drive on the left) pretty much all the roundabouts here that regularly have pedestrians will have triggered traffic lights or the pedestrian crossing at least a car length before the roundabout starts so if you're entering a roundabout you're almost always in front of where people will cross if they're not just being dumb. Once you're used to roundabouts they're pretty formulaic and the biggest problem (for me anyway) on an unfamiliar roundabout is knowing which lane to be in, not the traffic already on the roundabout.