Hot or Not: Roundabouts

By Dave Loos, 2-11-08

	Caption: Photo by Anne Medley.

Orderly roundabouts — as opposed to the disorganized rotaries of East Coast cities such as Boston — are a safe, quiet, clean and community-friendly alternative to traffic lights and stop signs.

Here’s the pitch: A roundabout eliminates almost all of the risky split-second decision-making that occurs at most congested intersections. Do I try to make that left before the red light? Does that guy see the stop sign?

You wait until the circle is clear and move forward. The new roundabouts include signs in advance explaining what lane you should take in the circle, depending on where you plan to exit. If it doesn’t make sense the first time, proponents say it will on every subsequent trip.

Other pluses include the money and fuel savings. The annual operating and maintenance costs for stoplights can run as much as $5,000 per intersection. The elimination of stop-and-go driving makes for fuel savings. A roundabout serving 15,000 vehicles a day saves, annually, a total of 15,000 gallons of fuel, compared to the same intersection controlled by a traffic light, according to analysis from the Washington State Department of Transportation.

The first modern roundabout in the West was built in 1990 in Santa Barbara. Since then, the design has gained traction among federal and state design engineers.

The U.S. has more than 1,000 modern roundabouts, says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Hundreds more are on the drawing board. Still, the figures hardly compare to an estimated 300,000 red-green-and-yellow intersections in America, according to the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

It may be hard to argue against the merits of an efficient roundabout, but vehicles have a way of confounding the best of intentions. Anyway, mayhem versus orderly circling may well be the wrong way to measure this traffic question.

Sure, roundabouts may be cheap to operate — having no more operational costs than a stretch of roadway with a median — but the costs of implementing them are not.

What might be another, cheaper way to garner those roundabout benefits, namely the fuel savings and traffic flow?

How about improved signal timing? It’s inexpensive. It’s easy. It also reduces fuel consumption and traffic congestion. And energy-efficient light bulbs can greatly reduce the operating costs of traffic signals.

It may not be as sexy as a Euro-style roundabout, but a recent study by the U.S. Department of Transportation suggested 75 percent of the nation’s traffic lights could be improved dramatically by updating equipment and adjusting the timing. Hmmm.

This story first appeared in the preview issue of The New West magazine. For more information on the magazine, or to subscribe, go to www.newwest.net/magazine.