Comment by alkonaut
4 days ago
Knew before I clicked: it's a flat 4-way intersection of two large-ish streets where there is ample space for something else. Hint: draw a small circle in the middle of the intersection and take down the damn stop signs.
Are you talking about roundabouts? Those are a nightmare for pedestrians
Roundabouts aren't perfect but they greatly reduce the speed of traffic at the crossing point (while increasing the overall throughput of the intersection).
Without looking up statistics (and I'd love to be proven wrong here), I'd be willing to guess that roundabouts may result in some marginal increase in minor accidents but massively reduces fatalities or accidents that leave the pedestrian in the ICU.
Additionally with a roundabout the crossing can be moved a few cars down the street away from the roundabout itself so that cars can have line of sight to safely approach the crossing and pedestrians have time to react to incoming vehicles. On top of that proper placement of crossings allows a normal zebra crossing to be upgraded to a pelican, puffin, or toucan crossing without impeding flow of traffic within the roundabout.
For pedestrians, roundabouts also eliminate left turn lanes, saving ~9' of stroad width to cross and mean only looking one, predictable, direction at a time.
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1-lane roundabouts are OK
More than 1-lane and they're a disaster waiting to happen
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With roundabouts drivers only look to the left and don't come to a complete stop. If you're on foot trying to cross from the other direction good luck.
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I'm not against circles in general, but (along with pedestrians) they aren't exactly bike friendly either.
How so?
Both as a pedestrian and driver I prefer roundabouts as they force drivers to slow down to non-lethal speeds and there's typically a one car length of road between the turn and pedestrian crossing, so the cars are already going straight when they cross it.
The only road users who don't mix well with roundabouts are cyclists on cycling lanes, as they get in and out of view too fast.
Drivers also slow down at stop signs.
The issue with roundabouts is that drivers never look to the right while entering. We have a few around me in Long Beach and when you're on foot you may as well be invisible.
With heavy mixed traffic it's a nightmare for everyone. If pedestrians have the right of way (as they should) and there are a lot of them the whole thing would likely become a permanent traffic jam with almost always one car waiting to turn blocking most of the circle.
here in italy at certain roundabouts we have traffic lights that only work when a pedestrian called them. otherwise, the traffic lights flash a flashing yellow light and as a car you can use the roundabout as if the traffic lights didn't exist.
it's quite useful, if you ask me, it combines the best of both solutions. of course the traffic light has a countdown so if someone presses it immediately after having worked, it will wait for 30sec/1 min before being red again
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Yes. The crossings aren’t solved by the roundabout. But speeds are lowered going into the intersections. The crossings work the same (but may need to move away slightly from the roundabout).
Better: define one street as the thru street and put a stop or yield on the cross-street.
Yes any two streets crossing should ideally either be tiny (like small residential streets where no lights or signs are needed) or only one should be an obvious through street and the other(s) connecting streets. The key is to never have ”grids” of through streets.
zoom out on the map. There is a big roundabout a couple blocks away. It is called "The Circle In Orange."
We should aim at better drivers rather than better intersections, but bad drivers are everywhere.
Years ago I worked in a building on the side of a long straight road. The road ended with a blind curve to the right and 100m before the blind curve there was a pedestrian crossing.
Even though all drivers knew they would need to brake for the blind curve (it was visible and there were signs) the majority of them used to drive very fast and basically did not let people cross the road, only to push very hard on the brakes 10 meters beyond the pedestrian crossing.
The road design is what causes bad or good driving. The road you describe should narrow before the blind curve so the drivers would (often enough unconsciously) slow down before it. For the pedestrian crossing, small islands that separate the lanes and give pedestrians a safe space will help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
The bright side of roundabouts and (curbs) annd curves is that they create better (more cautious, observing) drivers, with minor consequences (like hitting a curb).
For lowering the high speed, we can also stack roundabouts, curbs (ie diverge and coverage the road).
The other positive of raised curbs is that we can add shrubbery as a natural traffic barrier, and there are some nice safety impacts from this too, such as reduced road runoff / flash flooding - and environmental factors like shade and cooling.
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