How not to build a traffic circle/roundabout/godforsaken irritating POS

I think I have you all beat. This is near me over in Mansfield, TX. Yes, it's a roundabout in the middle of a road, no intersection and I have driven on it.

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LOL @ traffic circles.
Almost unheard of in Ontario. Traffic lights are fine if you ask me.
 
This one is in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Each corner has a stoplight. Yes, they built a roundabout, then installed traffic lights in it. Does that not ruin the purpose of a roundabout?

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LOL @ traffic circles.
Almost unheard of in Ontario. Traffic lights are fine if you ask me.

Traffic lights are the best, but here in America we seem to have a fascination with 4-way stop sign intersections. Simple roundabouts are a better option than 4-way stops, especially if you have a ton of traffic coming from one direction and not so much from the others.
 
Traffic lights are the best, but here in America we seem to have a fascination with 4-way stop sign intersections. Simple roundabouts are a better option than 4-way stops, especially if you have a ton of traffic coming from one direction and not so much from the others.

A lot of traffic coming from one direction and not much from the others? That's where the TWO-WAY STOP (or its friends the one and three-way stops) come in. However these are usually applied incorrectly to prioritize traffic leaving an empty neighborhood over through traffic on an artery.
 
Traffic lights are annoying things that make you wait for the guy that wants to turn right.
 
Traffic lights are annoying things that make you wait for the guy that wants to turn right.

That's why we have the turn on red - it is legal to make a turn from the lane closest to the direction you wish to go, to the lane closest to the direction from which you came, unless a no-turn-on-red sign is displayed.
And the reason I have worded it like that - it applies to right turns under most conditions, as well as lefts from one one-way street to another.
 
Traffic lights are the best, but here in America we seem to have a fascination with 4-way stop sign intersections. Simple roundabouts are a better option than 4-way stops, especially if you have a ton of traffic coming from one direction and not so much from the others.

The only thing worse than a 4 way stop is a friggin 3 way. Bonus points if the direction with no stop is completely hidden from view so when you stop, yield, and finally go you still have someone suddenly flying at you from the priority direction.
 
I love how half the intersections posted in here are from Massachusetts! :dance: MA: it's where we weed out the weak.
 
I know, right? Traffic circles are hard! Dur hur...

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I have to laugh, because I see people get confused by this all the time...and it's not even a real traffic circle...it's just an island in the middle of a 4-way stop intersection...and yet, people try to go around the left side when turning left, etc. Idiots.

Berkley, why am I not surprised.
 
A lot of traffic coming from one direction and not much from the others? That's where the TWO-WAY STOP (or its friends the one and three-way stops) come in. However these are usually applied incorrectly to prioritize traffic leaving an empty neighborhood over through traffic on an artery.

Roundabouts make it easy to join the traffic flow. Not so much on a 1-way or 2-way, little less so on 3-ways. Removing a stop sign is just a bandaid, not a solution. Besides, I wasn't talking about high volume from one way and low/no volume from another. I was talking about high volume from one way and medium-high volume from the other(s), hence "not so much".

If we take my situation:

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In the morning, we have medium traffic going from S Oak Grove and splitting onto N Oak Grove and Walnut for work, mostly onto Walnut. At the same time we have thousands of high schoolers arriving nose to tail, mostly from N Oak Grove to S Oak Grove, but a third or so are coming in from Walnut.

In the afternoon, the kids go the other way and split onto Walnut and N Oak Grove. S Oak Grove is the only avenue they have to get out of school. It's about an hour of nose-to-tail.

Few hours later, the medium work traffic comes back in from both Walnut and N Oak Grove.

N Oak Grove is split into 1-ways by the creek. Also bear in mind that this is residential, so there's a constant flow of light traffic.

Solve that with stop signs.
 
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HB is in Orange County too, you know. I did have a subscription to the OCR and they have/had a report of accidents in the police blotter section.

It's been in use for longer than any living human and "a report of an accident" constitute it as a "regular accident point"? I don't deny accidents happen there, but I'd wager no more or less than any other part of OC.
 
This thread makes me happy that I live in a city where everything is flat and major streets are all on 1 square mile grid.

Up to the north about 80 miles is a town called Payson which, inexplicably, has a roundabout. Being such a small town, it only has one really major road, and it's on it. The side road it connects (Tyler Parkway) goes nowhere (though arguably in a small town like Payson, all roads go nowhere), and on the opposite side is a Home Depot car park.

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I just wonder why it was necessary to build a roundabout for a road that hardly ever gets used.
 
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