Round-a-bouts for saving gas

[Tony Raine]

I hope they felt the long arm of the law that night, with no lube on the rubber glove.

yes they did, because i called the cops

[cfg83]

Originally Posted by Funny

Here are reasons for engineering a rotary (I'm from Massachusetts too)properly and driver education:
...
Attachment 1971
This 8 lane nightmare is in Paris, L'Arc de Triomphe

BTW, In L'Arc de Triomphe, the people IN the rotary are suppossed to yeild to the people coming INTO the rotary, how backasswards is that! The other funny thing about the Arc, insurance companies in France, no matter who's fault an accident is in L'Arc de Triomphe, will not cover the damages at all for any reason, and the people involved have to split the damages bill 50/50! I personally would just avoid it...

I totally believe that. I was in Paris once and I saw the most terrifying thing at the L'Arc. A (BMW) Mini cut straight across traffic without deviating and got away with it. It accelerated on the orthogonal across maybe 4-5 car lanes and wa-la, no damage. Amazing.

Here is the only "real" traffic circle I know of in LA (Long Beach) :



It's very large and very nice, but I don't live there enough to tell you if it is efficient or not. I am only familiar with it because Zed Records was near there.

CarloSW2

[Clev]

Originally Posted by cfg83

Here is the only "real" traffic circle I know of in LA (Long Beach) :

It's very large and very nice, but I don't live there enough to tell you if it is efficient or not. I am only familiar with it because Zed Records was near there.

CarloSW2

There's one smack-dab in the middle of Orange. It's a nightmare because not only do people not know how to drive through one, there are crosswalks at each intersection, as well as crosswalks leading to and from the center:

chapman and glassell, orange, ca - Google Maps

It's pretty much a nightmare at all hours, but it's a landmark, so they'll never get rid of it.

[Katana]

That arkansaw one is good, in UK when you give directions you would say "go straight over at the roundabout" i guess they took it literally.
As the french guy said before, they work well in low/medium traffic but in high traffic they are useless and have to have traffic lights or people wanting to merge from lesser used roads get stuck waiting for ages as the high traffic users use the car in front as a shield to stop you merging.
I'll give the top 3 i hate in my area with google maps links.

Cooper dean roundabout
Too many lanes and merges, at peak times i've had some close calls on this.

Christchurch main
I ****ing hate this one, people coming from the right all the time and the traffic lights to stop them only work when a bus needs to go around. as you can see there a load of trees on it (becoming more common now) so visibility is gone and you can't see the other side of the roundabout -_-

Mountbatten roundabout
Don't go here very often but dread having to do it, multiple lanes, loads of traffic lights, and the thing is split into sections with their own lights. As stupid as it is, it works and is a sort of compromise to deal with peak times, but you have to watch out for new users as i've had close calls when they don't know the lane system.

[bennelson]

Hey Katana, all those round-a-bouts ARE messed up! Everyone's driving the wrong direction!!!

[jamesqf]

I rather liked the British roundabouts, though since I was always on a bike rather than driving, I stayed away from the high-traffic ones.

But Britain does have some of my favorite road signs. "Beware of Children" is a classic, but my favorite is "Change Priorities Ahead". Nothing like a little philosophical reflection to brighten your journey :-)

[Vanner]

Low to moderate traffic, huh? Then can we at least drop a couple into suburbia? Here in KY neighborhoods, the low-traffic cross-streets do not stop, rather, the throughstreet has stop signs every 50 feet. I realize that's for speed control, but could roundabouts not achieve the same effect and still let me get out of first gear? You can't pretend you're serious about emissions/combating gas prices when you're needlessly making everyone's SUV stop every 50 feet on the way to work. Plus the neighborhood gets those vegetated medians they seem to enjoy. Doesn't seem like a hard sell.

[metromizer]

[QUOTE=Tony Raine;68722]I rolled down the window, and just said "well, your fu**ed" as i drove by[QUOTE]

Tony, you're a very, very, bad man!

Funny, but very bad non-the-less

I've had mostly good experiences with rotarys, I work within a 1 square mile faciltiy that has a couple of single lane rotarys (I drive thru a roatry 4-5 times/day), they are very effiecient, I've never seen a problem in 22 years. There is another side of the coin, we don't allow access to the general public, the pepole who use them here qualify as 'regulars'.

I've been on several in and around Boston. Although Boston drivers are legendary, the rotarys seem to work fine there, too.

[rmay635703]

I hate roundabouts because they always place them on highways in sets, meaning prior to the roundabout I just drove 45mph the whole way down, after I have to slow way down a bunch of times because several low traffic roads intersect with them, never had a roundabout save fuel since I was never the one on the low traffic road.