allabootmatt
Senior Member
Uhh...Eglinton Road?
Guess the Post fired its fact-checkers.
Guess the Post fired its fact-checkers.
Mr. Wheeler?Anyone who's ever studied how things work outside this continent would never dismiss roundabouts as "goofy". The general public can be forgiven for their ignorance of how they work, but members of the works committee should be educated in things like this. Calling roundabouts goofy makes about as much sense as calling stop signs goofy.
You don't change lanes in a roundabout.Expecting people to change lanes while turning while looking for their exit while still driving defensively without giving them time to adjust to this new concept will likely be problematic.
You don't change lanes in a roundabout.
Do you have a link for Britain removing high capacity roundabouts? I've read they can handle 60,000 vehicles per day.
I know multi lane roundabouts are common, that's exactly what's shown in the link in my last post. You're still not changing lanes in the roundabout. You go into the appropriate lane before you even get into the roundabout, stay in that lane in the circle, and exit directly from that lane. If traffic entering the roundabout is blocking traffic in it, that sounds like a design flaw. Circulating traffic should never get blocked, that's the whole point to the give way rule that led to modern roundabouts in the first place. Does circulating traffic have to yield to traffic entering or something? Looks like there's a stop bar right in the middle of the roundabout.Depends on the design. If it's low-capacity and there's only one lane in the roundabout you don't. High-capacity roundabouts have multiple lanes. Look at this one in London, it's three lanes all the way around AND has "bypasses" on each corner allowing left-turners (our right-turners) to avoid the roundabout entirely. This is not abnormal, it's common. Notice the "keep clears" painted on the roadway. When bad congestion occurs on a roundabout a nasty case of gridlock happens where traffic entering the roundabout blocks traffic from exiting it causing, err..., "circle-lock".
(For craziness scroll just a bit to the north and look at the Cherry Lane roundabout).
On the flipside, roundabouts have been proliferating in the UK at low and and medium traffic intersections like a bad case of the measles. Sometimes all they do is paint a while circle in the middle of the road. I've even seen them at the end of driveways
I'm not sure if they've actually been removing any. I'll look for an article on it when I get home from work tonight.
I know multi lane roundabouts are common, that's exactly what's shown in the link in my last post. You're still not changing lanes in the roundabout. You go into the appropriate lane before you even get into the roundabout, stay in that lane in the circle, and exit directly from that lane. If traffic entering the roundabout is blocking traffic in it, that sounds like a design flaw. Circulating traffic should never get blocked, that's the whole point to the give way rule that led to modern roundabouts in the first place. Does circulating traffic have to yield to traffic entering or something? Looks like there's a stop bar right in the middle of the roundabout.
People both enter and exit from the inside lane in English roundabouts. You're never supposed to be right beside someone in a roundabout, even one with two lanes. Well I guess you could be beside someone when you're turning right, no harm done there. Here's some video of roundabouts in action - really busy ones too. Here's another one - two lanes with no lane markings like that diagram.Defining the "inside lane" as the one being near the centre of the roundabout, and "outside lane" being the one near the edge, but still with driving on the right...
That link that you posted showed no lane markings on the roundabout. That's ambiguous and makes it look like it only has one lane. What of someone turning left using the inside lane coming from the west while someone from the east is going straight ahead? They could both be following the rules and still collide as someone tries to exit the roundabout from the inside lane while the person in the outside lane tries to go straight.
With what I'm familiar with in England, you never exit a roundabout from the inside or middle lane. If you're on a three lane road coming to a three-lane roundabout, and want to turn left, you would enter the inside lane, then move over one lane towards the outside after each exit so you find yourself on the outside by the time you reach your exit. If you look at the Google Map image I provided, two of the roundabout exits are 1 lane, one is 2 lanes, and one is 3 lanes.
There's a stop bar at one place on the roundabout because there's traffic lights there as I described in a previous post. Traffic entering the roundabout gets a green light, backups happen for whatever reason, traffic can't get off the roundabout, gridlock occurs.
Look closer at those videos I posted - both show vehicles entering and exiting to and from the inside lane. You can really see it at the end of the first video.I'm not sure when it was built, but as I've said lights on large roundabouts are very common because they have a capacity limit. You can't "widen" a roundabout like you can a road once things get busy.
Those videos showed setups that I'm used to, nothing new there. The second one certainly didn't show volumes the we would be seeing at Don Mills and Eglinton. The first one shows as the guy drove through the intersection he moved outwards towards his exit. And there was plenty of driving right beside each other (That's just silly, what's the point of a multi-lane roadway if you're not allowed to drive beside someone?). A roundabout can be three lanes while an exit might only be one or two... obviously three lanes of traffic can't all exit out on to one lane.
Let me show you another high-traffic roundabout in London (one that I'm very familiar with). The M25/A10 junction. This one isn't obscured by the highway running over it and you can see line markings on the street and how it all works. Just like a tiny 400-series highway, a roundabout has "onramps" and "offramps", some with more lanes than others. Some lanes on the "highway" exit the "highway", some stay on, and some split allowing people to do either. Destinations for each lane is marked on the street. If you start on the road coming in from the north, you'll see that the inside lane is marked "M25 WATF'D". After entering the roundabout, the inside lane is still marked "M25 WATF'D". After the first exit, "M25 WATF'D" has moved over one lane towards the outside. After the next exit, "M25 WATF'D" is now on the outside lane.
This all provides a nice illustration of how traffic flows through a roundabout are supposed to work. It's much easier when you're dealing with low or moderate traffic flows, but that isn't what we have at Eglinton and Don Mills.
I love roundabouts. We should have has them here for years now. I'm just saying that it's foolish to think that we could introduce them at high-volume locations first, such as where a 6-lane road intersects a 6-lane road, and not expect problems. Sure, they're good for dealing with congestion; but that doesn't mean that the first place you introduce something completely new is at the most congested locations! They need to be phased in at intermediate-volume locations first.
I agree.Sure, they're good for dealing with congestion; but that doesn't mean that the first place you introduce something completely new is at the most congested locations! They need to be phased in at intermediate-volume locations first.
I have heard quite a few horror stories about the roundabouts in Waterloo region... so many people have no clue how to negotiate them. Hopefully it will improve with time and I am all for progress and efficency.
Yes, almost everyone who's used roundabouts enough to get used to them and compare them with regular intersections likes the roundabout choice.