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Comment by pornel

8 hours ago

This dreaming about roundabouts is as American as the fantasies about using metric one day.

Nowadays, depending on your state, they're being built in almost every new intersection that would call for one. And the worst existing intersections converted to them. It's happening and will only speed up.

They’re being used often in new construction areas. It’s just not likely that they’ll be retrofitted to existing areas due to needing more space than regular intersections.

They are everywhere in the areas around me now. I had a similar sentiment at one time and now they seem pretty common.

I think roundabouts work fantastically well in some places but in others they are unnecessary and in others don't work as well as alternatives. Maybe that's obvious but every so often I feel like they are overapplied — probably because of what you're mentioning, along with the fact they were underapplied in other areas in the past. I've come to like them usually but sometimes it feels like the civil engineers were having too much fun at the cost of practicality.