I live moments away from this roundabout. It's confusing. Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward. You're either clear to enter, or you're not.

Adding lanes makes it far more confusing. I consider myself, you know, pretty smart. Not stupid, at least.

But I almost sideswiped someone in this roundabout the other day. Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that the middle lane would not cross over the outer lane. E.x. a car in the inner lane would not pass through the outer lane (except at the very end). So when I saw an oncoming car in the inner lane I thoguht I was safe to enter the outer lane. Not so. The inner lane car was actually lane-changing to the outer lane (at the exact point I was about to enter the roundabout) in order to exit.

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tomfakes 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I too live nearby

The lanes are quite narrow, and the outer curb is deceptive - there’s a 1” edge with a curved curb behind it making it look wider than it actually is. Scraping along that edge will push cars into the center of the road. There will be a lot of minor accidents here due to the road design.

One other second order effect - people are getting used to roundabouts here now, but nearby are ‘traffic circles’ that are roundabouts with stop signs on some entrances. People are now ignoring those stop signs (because it’s a roundabout!). I almost hit 3 cars in 2 intersections as people ignored their stop sign.

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balfirevic 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> People are now ignoring those stop signs (because it’s a roundabout!)

Do you mean they treat it as if they have right-of-way when entering? Because that's also unusual (but not unheard of) in roundabouts.

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lokar 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

traffic circles (w/ stop signs) are an abomination and should be removed

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com2kid 8 hours ago | parent [-]

They exist so people cannot run through the stop sign. Their only connection to a round about is the shape.

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munificent 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's more complex than that. I live in Seattle near a street that has these traffic circles. The design is:

* There is a round obstruction in the middle of the intersection like a roundabout.

* The street going north-south through the intersection does not have a stop sign.

* The street going east-west has stop signs on both sides.

* But the north-south street which doesn't have to stop also has speed humps on it to slow drivers down.

On its face, this seems like a totally bananas design. The street that should be efficient by not having to stop has traffic calming speed humps on it anyway, negating the efficiency. The cross streets get none of the efficiency of a roundabout because they have to stop anyway. And the combination of roundabout and stop signs is very confusing to drivers.

It makes no sense... if you assume the intersection is designed entirely for cars.

But it isn't, it's a "neighborhood greenway"[1]. The north-south street is designed to improve bicycle traffic. The speed humps don't slow cyclists down. The roundabout middle and stop signs on the cross streets make it safer for cyclists to cruise through the intersection without stopping.

If you ever bike commute, you quickly learn how lethal a lot of stopping and going is for cycling. The effort and efficiency really only make sense if you can go a fairly steady speed for much of your commute. Accelerating a bike is a lot of work.

Once you factor in bikes, the design of these intersections makes more sense. At least in theory. In practice, though people are consistently confused by "roundabout + stop signs" and I see drivers blow through those stop signs more than I've ever seen any other traffic violation by a large margin. Because of that, cyclists and drivers going north-south still have to be paranoid going into the intersection. Even though they have the right of way, there's about a 25% chance the other driver won't stop anyway.

It was a good idea, and maybe the execution will work out once people get more educated. But right now it's a mess. I walk along that street often and I spend a lot of time gesticulating wildly at drivers when they blow through those stop signs.

[1]: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

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com2kid 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Hah! Yeah I also live on a neighborhood greenway street with a traffic circle in Seattle and the odd stop sign layout. It confused me for a year until I learned about the greenway program.

Seattle has plenty of traffic circles just laying around that predate the greenway program though.

I almost never see Seattle drivers blow through stop signs though, maybe people in my neighborhood are just more chill? :D

	▲	munificent 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Mine was converted to a greenway pretty recently, so it may be that drivers just have old habits from before when those intersections didn't have any stop signs.

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gs17 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I live by a bunch of these, but worse IMO is the "four way intersection with no signs or circle or anything" where you just kind of hope no one comes fast and hits you (I imagine on a bike where you wouldn't stop if there was a sign this is even more dangerous). Seattle is weird. Traffic circle with stop signs is fine by me, they don't really function well as roundabouts for most cars, anyways, some of them are too cramped to actually go all the way around smoothly.

	▲	munificent 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> worse IMO is the "four way intersection with no signs or circle or anything" where you just kind of hope no one comes fast and hits you Agreed, totally. That's what this street used to be before they converted it. I hated driving it because I had to crawl through each intersection because you never knew if someone was going to just blow through it or not. It was even slower than a four-way stop.

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lokar 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems reasonable. Of course there are really good (true) roundabout designs that are great of cycling (and walking), but without understanding the space it's hard to know if they would fit / work well.

	▲	gs17 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What they're talking about is basically a small concrete circle (sometimes it's not a circle, but a round-ish shape vaguely near the center) plopped down in a standard residential intersection (sometimes with a lot of stuff in it that blocks the view in case you were worried about knowing if someone is crossing the street on the other side). Better designs likely wouldn't fit without raising the cost a huge amount.

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dwd a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward

Like the Arc de Triomphe roundabout? :)

If it had lane marking there would apparently be 10 tracks around the circle.

What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way.

The reason it works seems to be French attitude. Cars entering do their thing, and cars already going around do their thing (and just have to avoid anyone on their right).

	▲	thinkling 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way. The thing that’s bananas is that this is a City of Paris rule. In the rest of France, traffic entering a roundabout must yield. Not inside Paris. Better make sure you know this! And even more crazy, the Periphérique, the controlled-access ring road around Paris which tends to move at 40-50mph, is a city street and so traffic entering that highway-like “street” also has right-of-way.
	▲	TRiG_Ireland 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The top of the Arc is open space. Standing up there watching the traffic is amusing. I once saw two buses, side-by-side, exit the roundabout, while the motorbike sandwiched between them attempted to continue further around the circle. Luckily, everything happened at fairly slow speeds, so collision was avoided.
	▲	gs17 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way. I saw that on either Top Gear or The Grand Tour and was convinced they were just making fun of the French. It's really odd to not have changed it when everyone else learned that lesson already.
	▲	imp0cat 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not hitting anyone is a skill some people seem to lack. Sometimes the rules say one thing, but you have to do another, mostly give way even if you're not supposed to yield.

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zimpenfish 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that [another motorist wouldn't be a complete blithering idiot]

I regret to inform you...