Roundabouts
Apparently, roundabaouts are the new new thing in easing traffic congestion.
The Star Tribune and MPR have both recently reported on a few metro area cities that have put in roundabouts or will be in the near future.
The benefit supposedly lies in that 1) no one actually has to stop as you would for a traffic light or stop sign, keeping traffic moving; but 2) it does force you to slow down, improving safety.
According to MNDOT traffic engineer Ken Johnson, the way to use a roundabout is, “As you come up to it, if there’s a gap, go. If not, wait.”
Seems simple enough, but I know these damn things drive me nuts in practice. It’s the whole thing about an inner vs outer lane. Are there two lanes? Can I exit to the right from this inner lane? Can I tell from the signage which street I’m about to get on? Because I couldn’t just keep going straight to stay on this road and now I’m all disoriented.
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Roundabouts are fun! I loved driving on my first one in Germany. I’m tempted to buy a car just so I can drive them here.
I like driving roundabouts when I’m in Boston. It makes sense and are pretty simple to get the hang of it.
There’s already a roundabout at Minnehaha near what used to be called Nahwadaha. If you think Minnesota drivers at a 4-way stop are bad, you should see them try to do the roundabout.
They’re absolutely awful. If they signal at all, they do so going into the roundabout (duh, everyone has to go right, stop blinking!) and then they turn off their signal and bail out of the roundabout without any warning. It makes it hard to judge when you can jump in.