Friday 19 May 2017

Cutting Corners: Mapping America’s Roundabouts

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May 19, 2017 at 5:20 pm by | Illustration by Jeff Xu, Nicolas Rapp, and Pete Sucheski

Cutting Corners: Mapping America's Roundabouts
From the June 2017 issue
In and around the vicinity of C/D headquarters, roundabouts are proliferating. This follows a national trend from the past two decades, particularly between 2005 and 2010. It has also led to an all-too-common phenomenon, in which those who understand the key benefit of these European-style circles—expediting the flow of cars through an intersection—come up on panicked motorists encountering one for the first time, leading to overaggressive application of both brakes and horn. But we can’t really blame the rubes for being confused because, in the vast acreage of ­Ameri­ca, true roundabouts are still relatively scarce. Since road construction is largely localized, roundabouts tend to be concentrated in areas where state or county transportation departments favor them. Areas such as these.

Cutting Corners: Mapping America's Roundabouts

Cutting Corners: Mapping America's Roundabouts

Anatomy of a Roundabout

Anatomy of a Roundabout

• Engineers will argue about its exact definition, but a roundabout, generally speaking, is a circular roadway at an intersection de­signed to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents. U.S. roundabouts flow counterclockwise.
• Roundabouts differ from traditional traffic circles in that entering traffic yields rather than stops at either a sign or a light.
• Roundabouts have a diameter small enough to cause traffic to slow but are larger than a neighborhood traffic circle.


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