Runabouts can be very awesome, but can anyone explain to me what the hell is going on in the UK where (in some places) they’ve added a bunch of traffic lights to their roundabouts? In my (admittedly limited) experience, they make them substantially worse, but perhaps I’m missing something?
From my understanding there are two main beneftis:
Capacity
Safety
Roundabouts work great, until the amount of traffic becomes to big. Then it actually starts causing problems.
At that point you can put in a regular intersection with traffic lights, which actually works better than a roundabout does in high traffic environments. But you do lose out on the traffic safety benefits, with head-on collisions becoming possible again.
A roundabout with traffic lights increases the capacity of the intersection while still reducing the risk of deadly accidents.
It’s also a lot cheaper than upgrading to the next step, which is building an interchange.
Signalised roundabouts are also quite prevalent in the Netherlands, and I can speak from experience that they generally work quite well if the lights are adjusted properly.
Note: I’m just some random guy, I’m by no means an expert on the matter.
This is just my understanding of the benefits of lighted roundabouts.
Runabouts can be very awesome, but can anyone explain to me what the hell is going on in the UK where (in some places) they’ve added a bunch of traffic lights to their roundabouts? In my (admittedly limited) experience, they make them substantially worse, but perhaps I’m missing something?
From my understanding there are two main beneftis:
Roundabouts work great, until the amount of traffic becomes to big. Then it actually starts causing problems.
At that point you can put in a regular intersection with traffic lights, which actually works better than a roundabout does in high traffic environments. But you do lose out on the traffic safety benefits, with head-on collisions becoming possible again.
A roundabout with traffic lights increases the capacity of the intersection while still reducing the risk of deadly accidents.
It’s also a lot cheaper than upgrading to the next step, which is building an interchange.
Signalised roundabouts are also quite prevalent in the Netherlands, and I can speak from experience that they generally work quite well if the lights are adjusted properly.
Note: I’m just some random guy, I’m by no means an expert on the matter.
This is just my understanding of the benefits of lighted roundabouts.