In a Roundabout Way

About a week ago, the worst thing that can ever happen to a community happened in my town, and it has been absolute pandemonium ever since. Everywhere I go I hear the cries of the people, from the grocery store checkout lines to the ladies’ locker room at the community center. And don’t get me started on the city’s Facebook page, where many comments contain exasperated emoji faces, excessive exclamation points, terrible grammar, and sometimes even ALL CAPS.

People are pretty upset, and it’s little wonder why, because last week, after months of public notices, published plans, and inconvenient construction, an old interstate ramp connected to the town’s main commercial thoroughfare was suddenly closed and replaced with a new one that includes, of all things (and I’m sorry if this is too upsetting for your sensibilities), a roundabout.

Oh, yeah. That looks easy to navigate. Arpingstone at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I know. It’s difficult to process. I’ll give you a minute.

The dreaded roundabout can trace its roots, as well as its generally bad reputation, back to the mid-nineteenth century when French Emperor Napoleon III decided to give the streets of Paris a makeover. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was chosen for the job, and the city underwent a major overhaul to its public works, including the Place de l’Étoile (today known as the Place Charles de Gaulle) which circles around the Arc de Triomphe.

The circle, which has no lane markings, serves as the convergence point of twelve roads that all empty straight into it. Traffic traveling around the circle must yield to incoming traffic and those vehicles that have made their way into the innermost portion of the circle have to stay there probably forever.

Fortunately, I’ve never driven it, but when I attempted to find a graphic demonstrating what the traffic pattern should ideally look like, the best I could do were some videos of rush hours nightmares and a delightfully helpful list of tips that include “be a little bit pushy” and “know what your insurance covers.” Of course there have long been terrible traffic circles in other places as well, including the US and, as Clark Griswold demonstrated in the 1984 film National Lampoon’s European Vacation, in the UK.

But in 1966, the traffic circle got an overhaul itself thanks to British city designer Frank Blackmore who developed a newer, friendlier roundabout in which traffic entering from soft curves, yields to the traffic already moving around the circle. When implemented, his design reduced accidents, and maybe after a while didn’t seem like the worst thing ever.

In 2016, Carmel, Indiana received the International Roundabout of the Year Award from the UK based Roundabout Appreciation Society. This isn’t a picture of the winning intersection, but I did think it was worth noting that there is such a society that gives out such awards. Image by Roberto Ramon Diaz Blanco from Pixabay

Then in 1984, when the English had been happily driving around in circles for nearly two decades, American engineer Leif Ourston reached across the pond with a possibly slightly over-the-top appeal, suggesting to Blackmore that as Sir Winston Churchill once asked America to join Britain in a struggle to protect democracy, it would be lovely if Britain might join us to bring the love for the roundabout to America.

Since no one could say no to an appeal like that, Blackmore agreed. The two toured the nation’s cities, proposing their safer alternative to stoplight-controlled intersections. Perhaps predictably, complaining people shouted them down everywhere they went. Some even held protest signs that included excessive exclamation points and ALL CAPS!!!!

It wasn’t until the city of Las Vegas agreed to give it a go and placed two roundabouts in a residential area of the city that they made any progress at all. The number of accidents went down and the incidences of roundabouts crept up throughout the US, leading the town of Carmel, Indiana to become the roundabout capitol of the nation with upward of 138 of them serving a population of just under 100,000 spread over an area of forty-nine square miles.

See? Easy-peasy. Loginname, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I bet the citizens of Carmel did their fair share of grumbling at first, though I imagine they’ve gotten used to it by now. It’s hard to spend too much time arguing against an 89% reduction in traffic delays, a 56% reduction in stops, a 29% reduction in carbon emissions, a 28% reduction in fuel consumption, a 38% reduction in accidents at intersections (which account for 50% of traffic accidents nationwide), and a 90% reduction in fatalities at intersections.

I think folks in my town will eventually accept their tragic fate as well. This is, after all, not our first brush with these horrid circles. Just a quick count in my head comes up with at least six other roundabouts in town that I drive through regularly. I suspect there are more than that, each one initially met with righteous anger by local skeptics who grudgingly admitted after a while that it maybe didn’t seem like the worst thing ever.

People do come around, if in a somewhat roundabout way.