![roundabout[1]](http://urbandiscoveriesblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/roundabout1.jpg?w=234 "roundabout[1]")
In yesterday’s link round up we pointed over to Baltimore Brew, which has an excellent post assigning effectiveness grades to each of Baltimore’s planned roundabout intersections. It’s a well-reasoned piece, even doing that so-rare Internet feat of not just complaining, but suggesting viable, perhaps better, alternatives. And while I normally don’t like to get into blogosphere back-and-forths (hey, we’re all friends here), I couldn’t help but feel that little hamster wheel turning in my brain, wondering if the city’s plan was as poorly thought-out as Baltimore Brew seemed to think it was. I pondered.
It’s easy to hate roundabouts if you’re unfamiliar with them. Or, worse, if you’re only familiar with them when driving through that necessary evil known as Towson Circle. I don’t blame you for hating that. It’s terrible and weird… but, according to pretty much everyone, a vast improvement from what was there before. Traffic flow is faster and more importantly, safer. The Sun reports, “In 2007, the last full year for which the state has figures, there were no injury crashes [at Towson Circle].”
Sit back and think about that for a second. No injury crashes in a calendar year at Towson Circle, the intersection of York Road, Dulaney Valley Road, Allegheny Avenue and Joppa Road. That’s something. And safety is inherent in the design of roundabouts; circular one-way traffic patterns mean almost no head-on collisions or T-bones. And, moreover, the same Sun article also says that, “According to the State Highway Administration, there has never been a fatal accident at an intersection that has been replaced with a roundabout… [additionally] serious injuries have been reduced by 85 percent at such locations, while total crashes are down by 60 percent.” Baltimore Brew, while doing some really great intersection-by-intersection analysis, overlooked public safety, something the city cannot do.
A brief, personal aside to finish up: The summer after I graduated from high school my suburban Kansas town put in three roundabouts on a series of intersections about a mile from my house. It was a busy two-lane stretch of road that cut through a residential area, so adding lanes or stoplights was out of the question, and, considering the congestion, the stop signs had been proven ineffective. Construction took the better part of seven months, during which time I had to drive about three miles out of my way to get home, usually cursing the city planning commissioner under my breath for his stupid, hippie, Euro-trash plan. And finally when they were finished that November, I drove through them and found that traffic moved faster, but cars moved slower. Safer for the neighborhood, better for drivers. Give these roundabouts a chance, Baltimore; you may wind up pleasantly surprised.
Posted in: City Living, TransportationNo Comments
Drivers tend to hate roundabouts because they slow you down and make you think. At a standard intersection all you need to know about what to do (stop or go) is determined by the traffic light, so if the light is green you just speed through on autopilot. You need to be more engaged to use a roundabout, since you need to assess the whole time when it’s a good time to enter, how to deal with other cars there, etc. It’s more mentally taxing and more irritating, but that’s exactly why they’re safer.