Round and roundabout
What more can be said of the proposed roundabout at Broadway and Napa Street?
For starters, how about “thanks” to the hardworking folks who made the sketches and the PowerPoint, donned Kevlar vests and drew straws to see which of them would present it to the public? To those who think roundabouts are godless heathen crop circles, remember: the City paid them to do it; it’s really not their fault.
Public reaction to the roundabout proposal has run the gamut from rapturous delight all the way to OMG! and WTF!? However, City officials who have commented have been 100 percent unanimous in their opinion, which might be roughly translated as, “If you think we’re going to jump on this merry-go-round before all the firearms in town have been confiscated, you’re nuts.” Or, as one put it, “We’d like more public input.”
Undisputed, of course, is that Plaza traffic at that intersection is increasingly chaotic, and pedestrians – particularly Mr. & Ms. Tourist – are heavily implicated. However, though the oblivious stop to take selfies, referee family arguments and perform other vacation rituals in the crosswalks, pedestrians are not totally at fault.
To cross Broadway or Napa in front of City Hall, they must now traverse four lanes of traffic. Sober and without pushing a stroller, that’s a long walk even for local residents (average age = 49.2). In response, roundabout designers provided tiny pedestrian perches mid-crossing where tourists can seek refuge during the long sprints between opposing lanes of hurtling steel.
Driver patience is also short. By Broadway, harried eastbound motorists have already been delayed by jammed intersections at Second and First Streets West. Irate westbounders are fresh from the similar mash-up at First Street East. Those who circled the Plaza through the equally crowded north corners are by now barely holding it together, and ugliness is averted only by the presence of numerous witnesses.
Residents familiar with this intersection already know that whatever it may do to the Plaza’s ‘historic ambiance,’ a roundabout will (choose one): make traffic (a) worse, (b) really worse, (c) totally fried, (d) have no effect. Each outcome will require the same several million dollars to try it out. But face it: nothing short of a complete Plaza auto-ban will make it better, for reasons easily discernable.
First, forget that a new hotel will soon sit less than 100 yards west of the intersection. Even without a roundabout, its addition to cars and tourists commend it as a “traffic-calming measure.”
Second, traversing a roundabout requires motorists to keep moving, which works best without distractions (e.g., pedestrians). When motorists of uneven ability follow each other around a small circle, hopefully alert to other motorists entering the flow at each entry street, there is scant room for error. Nor does the sketch adequately convey how small the turning radius would actually be. Trucks and tour buses navigating a roundabout with eight crosswalks full of pedestrians could become a tourist attraction in itself.
Of course, the occasional lost tourist will inadvertently exit at the Horseshoe only to U-turn at City Hall, startling Plaza ducks before heading south again, startling the circling westbound drivers about to startle the tourists lollygagging in the western crosswalk.
Totally ignored in the thinking, however, is that east-and-westbound motorists leaving the circle will – as now – often run SMACK into traffic backed up from the un-rehabilitated intersections at First Streets East and West. Unlike the current situation, such a backup could gridlock the roundabout intersection, if not the entire Plaza.
Motorists approaching the clogged circle from all directions would queue up for blocks, weeping, clutching crucifixes and murmuring softly as they creep inexorably toward their fate in the Carousel of the Damned.
But relax. That nightmare can’t happen until after the nightmare caused by months of roundabout construction, in the fair weather of the Farmers Market and tourist season, around the time that new hotel is going up down the street.
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Modern roundabouts are the safest form of intersection in the world. Visit http://tinyurl.com/iihsRAB for modern roundabout FAQs and safety facts. Modern roundabouts, and the pedestrian refuge islands approaching them, are two of nine proven safety measures identified by the FHWA, http://tinyurl.com/7qvsaem
The FHWA has a video about modern roundabouts that is mostly accurate (http://tinyurl.com/6v44a3x).
The safety comes from the ‘slow and go’ operation instead of the ‘stop or go fast’ way a stop light works. The smaller size of properly designed modern roundabouts is what makes them safer and keeps speeds in the 20 mph range. This makes it much easier to avoid a crash or stop for pedestrians. It also means that if a crash happens the likelihood of injury is very low. Safety is the #1 reason there are over 3,500 modern roundabouts in the US today and many more on the way.
Modern, slow and go, roundabout intersections have less delay than a stop light or stop sign (http://tinyurl.com/mythbustersRAB), especially the other 20 hours a day people aren’t driving to or from work. Average daily delay at a signal is around 12 seconds per car. At a modern roundabout average delay is less than five seconds. Signals take an hour of demand and restrict it to a half hour, at best only half the traffic gets to go at any one time. At a modern roundabout four drivers entering from four directions can all enter at the same time. Don’t try that with a signalized intersection.
I’m pretty sure Clearwater, Florida gets many more tourists, and they seem to do just fine using modern roundabouts. And, blaming the inefficiency of adjacent signals for backups into the modern roundabout seems like a stretch.