Roundabouts of Massachusetts

[Tim]

This is for you folks across the pond, and the locals west of the Catskills. Our English forefathers most certainly brought this design over to the U.S.A. Good ole' New England is loaded with what they like to call "Rotories".
Many of the small cities have them in the center of town, such as the first one in the video at Taunten, MA. Two more follow on the way out to the "Outer Cape".

 

[roadbug]

When I was still living in the states the city of Carmel (yeah, there is a Carmel Indiana, go figure) started putting in roundabouts, seems like everywhere. So I got used to them, good thing cause they use them a lot over here. I thought I read someplace that after they started putting them in someone did a study that showed they were no better than a regular intersection as far as accidents and keeping traffic going. Not sure I believe that; felt more like someone who didn’t like roundabouts trying to discredit them. They seem to, for the most part, work.

 

[reverend]

Near where I live the woman who works for the council who did all the configuration of traffic lights, roundabouts and one ways can't actually drive!

As you can imagine it's carnage. Amusingly the easiest roundabouts have been broken beyond belief with bad signalling and the most dangerous one in the county (statistically proven) they didn't install lights so still gets loads of crashes!

When they were doing roadworks recently they disabled the lights and traffic was better than it had been in years - but the council don't listen!

 

[Dashmellow]

The official name for roundabouts should be changed to "Vicious Circles".

 

[Gibson99]

rotaries/traffic circles may actually improve traffic flow, but ONLY if everyone knows how to use them and actually uses them properly. when you just start dropping them in america where almost nobody knows how to use them, it's much worse than a regular intersection. drifters like them though...

 

[Dashmellow]

rotaries/traffic circles may actually improve traffic flow, but ONLY if everyone knows how to use them and actually uses them properly. when you just start dropping them in america where almost nobody knows how to use them, it's much worse than a regular intersection. drifters like them though...

I think you hit the nail on the head! Roundabouts are fairly new in my state and I still can't get over how many people come to a full stop or slow down to a crawl deciding what to do halfway through the circle. We also get a lot of tourists in my area and this just compounds the various roundabout problems. To makes matters worse again, our two local roundabouts were squeezed into intersections that are really way to small for a roundabout and the many tractor-trailers coming off the interstate into the roundabout can barely fit.

 

[Gibson99]

houston has a couple of large roundabouts in/near the museum district as well as some others but i try to avoid them whenever possible. thankfully, most times i have to use them, i just stay in the outer lane because the route i'm taking means i take the first exit anyway. because this is right next to the museum of science and the zoo, and there's a huge fancy fountain in the center of one, there are lots of people going thru the area who aren't familiar with how they work (and are busy gawking/yelling at kids/generally NOT driving), so it sucks.

This one is actually easy to use and most people keep their wits when using it, because it's NOT in a touristy area, so if you use it, you probably use it regularly. most times you don't even have to slow down - i can take it comfortably at 40 mph in my wife's minivan. we'll just say i take it slightly faster than 40 in my miata when no one else is around (no countersteering though, unless i encounter unexpected dirt/debris/water on the road).

i think in houston they just put in rotaries because they think they look cool.

i've also driven some of them in and around boston. i nearly wrecked on one somewhere in cambridge because a) it was dark, b) i'd never been this way before, c) the rotaries were very small/tight, and d) once i took the proper exit from one rotary, in about 100 feet i had no choice but to enter another rotary - it was that second rotary where i almost hit someone because i wasn't expecting to enter another one so quickly. i generally have a pretty good sense of direction but after the second rotary, i wasn't sure which direction i was actually pointed. thank god for gps.

cambridge is VERY densely packed. i imagine it's probably very similar to London and other old european cities in that respect.

 

[Dashmellow]

i've also driven some of them in and around boston. i nearly wrecked on one somewhere in cambridge because a) it was dark, b) i'd never been this way before, c) the rotaries were very small/tight, and d) once i took the proper exit from one rotary, in about 100 feet i had no choice but to enter another rotary - it was that second rotary where i almost hit someone because i wasn't expecting to enter another one so quickly. i generally have a pretty good sense of direction but after the second rotary, i wasn't sure which direction i was actually pointed. thank god for gps.

cambridge is VERY densely packed. i imagine it's probably very similar to London and other old european cities in that respect.

I live maybe 100 miles from the Boston area and have had to go there once in awhile. Hate to! Boston is the hands down WORST city to drive in that I've ever experienced! If you don't get yourself into an accident you'll just end up totally lost! I grew up and learned to drive in NYC and it can be challenging but compared to Boston, it's sane.

 

[Gibson99]

at least boston has the T, which wasn't bad the few times i've used it. i've never driven in downtown chicago (aka the loop) but their public transit doesn't seem too bad either - i rode it from o'hare to the loop and back. houston's public transit is a joke compared to these two. of course, houston's geographic footprint is probably bigger than boston and chicago combined. i know the county houston is in (Harris county) is larger than the entire state of rhode island. :/

 

[Tim]

i know the county houston is in (Harris county) is larger than the entire state of rhode island. :/

FWIW, San Bernardino county in California is larger than the state of Massachusetts.

 

[Gibson99]

FWIW, San Bernardino county in California is larger than the state of Massachusetts.

some counties in west texas are pretty big too, but not that big. i was making the comparison since houston/harris county (which houston takes up the bulk of harris county) mostly because of population size. and that every time i visit my mom in new hampshire, she complains when she has to drive more than 15-20 miles to go do something, since everything's so close together... meanwhile if you ever have to drive LESS than that around houston, it's a treat.

 

[Dashmellow]

some counties in west texas are pretty big too, but not that big. i was making the comparison since houston/harris county (which houston takes up the bulk of harris county) mostly because of population size. and that every time i visit my mom in new hampshire, she complains when she has to drive more than 15-20 miles to go do something, since everything's so close together... meanwhile if you ever have to drive LESS than that around houston, it's a treat.

I kind of know how your mom feels. I live in Vermont, a few miles from NH and it can feel like a big deal to drive 20 miles but it really isn't. It's a question of scale I guess. One time when I visited NYC I was telling a guy at the hotel bar that I live on a thirty acre property. The guy told me he lives in a tiny apartment and said he was having trouble getting his mind around the idea of living on thirty acres. He couldn't understand how big thirty acres really is and I tried to explain but didn't really think I did a good job of it. This was back in 2002 and the next day I visited the site of Ground Zero downtown where the World Trade Center stood. I found myself staring at a hole in the ground that was 16 acres in size and realized that my property is twice that and I had never before been able to see the scale of this acreage before in quite that way. I was sorry I couldn't have just told him how big ground zero was. Then again, I once worked on a cattle ranch in Casper, Wyoming and it was 60,000 acres. The ranch next door was 100,000 acres. You can get on a horse and ride all day in a straight line and the scenery never looked any different. It really is a matter of scale and what we get used to.