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Should we convert more Park City intersections to roundabouts?
I live in Jeremy Ranch and the Jeremy and Pinebrook roundabouts are often the bane of my existence. When we did Park City Follies, we had a whole video about the roundabouts with lots of a four-letter word mixed in.
With that in mind, I came upon the most comprehensive discussion of roundabouts that I have ever read. It was amazing. I learned such facts as:
- The Jeremy and Pinebrook “roundabouts” are actually called rotaries, due to their size.
- One-quarter of the 35,000 traffic death per year in the US happen at intersections.
- 0.1 percent of all crashes at roundabouts end in death. 04 percent of crashes at intersections lead to death.
- Elon Musk says Tesla’s can’t self drive roundabouts yet.
- It costs at least a couple of million dollars per intersection to convert it to a single lane, small, roundabout.
If you have the time, and care about roundabouts, this Freakonomics article is worth the time. In some ways they make a lot of sense.
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Parkrag
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Roundabouts are easier in some ways and harder in others.
Drivers are more accustomed to how to navigate a stop sign. More drivers are unfamiliar with roundabouts and try to exit off roundabouts from the inside lane quite frequently. There isn’t time in a roundabout to think for those drivers. They just panic and go for it, or they come to a crawl or stop while they figure out what they should do.
Roundabouts also take up more space with asphalt. Passengers’ heads are squished against the window as the vehicle makes a long, tight hard turns around roundabouts.
I don’t know the answer. Personally, I’m tired of all the roundabouts and would prefer to avoid them if I could, mostly because other drivers don’t navigate them as intended and put me and my passengers in danger almost daily. I’m a defensive driver who knows not to exit from the middle lane. Roundabouts might not generate as many accidents, but they certainly generate a fair amount of frustration during driving.
I lived in England for a year and half. I have a British driver license. Round -abouts are every where. It’s in their DNA. They work wonderful in many situations and mostly keep traffic moving. Sometimes not. I regularly seen traffic backed up for a full mile trying to enter a single Iane roundabout. Not just one or two directions but all five roads. They are not perfect. But for the purpose they are designed they do work. But when a road has consistent high traffic , guess what they do, they install traffic signals. In the middle of the roundabout. Even the British have trouble navigating a multiple lane roundabout or double roundabout. This is true on a high traffic road. So another solution to high traffic roads is take the roundabout out and put in traffic signals on a intersection. Especially in the city of Liverpool. Liverpool is a little unusual in England in that they have wide roads. This helps. Americans do need to learn how to navigate roundabout. Learn the do and nots of roundabout use. In short in some situations roundabout are the solution in some situations they are the problem.
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